Page:Flaming Youth black on red.pdf/96

 92

FLAMING

YOUTH

“‘She’s a terrible brat,” replied the other. “She is your sister and therefore has for me a shadow of your delight about her.” “How foreign you sound when you say those things! I love it in you.” “Do you? But you use the word ‘love’ so lightly.” “TI don’t think of it lightly. No,” she whispered, reading the swift fire in his eyes and holding him back with a light hand upon his shoulder. “Not again. Not now. That other time—it frightened me.” “Don’t be afraid of me,” he murmured. “I can wait.” “Ah, but I’m more afraid of you when you wait than when you seek,” she smiled, and he reflected, with warm

recognisance, that for once she had shown a gleam of subtlety, that subtlety which had so enthralled him in the mother, for which he was ever eagerly looking in the daughter. ‘“You’ll be at the club dance Saturday?” she added. “Since you are to be there. Cela va sans dire.” Scott, delayed from reaching the club house early, found the dance in full swing when he got there. It was one of the largest and gayest of the season. ‘The eleyenth commandment as promulgated by Mr. Volstead, “Thou shalt not drink except by stealth,” had made every man a walking bar-room. Having neglected to provide himself with a flask, Scott was quite discomfited when Constance, sitting out one of the three dances which were all that she had allowed him, railed at him with a charm-

ing air of proprietorship for his negligence. “I might pass out on your hands and you’d have nothing to revive me with.”

“Possibly I could borrow some from this youth,” said he as a young fellow with his shirt gaping open where a stud had deserted its post, wavered toward them.