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FLAMING

YOUTH

181

  • Do you want it to be?”

“No. I want it to be—as it is. Yet I don’t.” He gathered himself together. “I’m sorry, little Pat. Suppose we agree to forget it.” “I won’t,” she mutinied. “I don’t want to forget it.” “TI do,” he said moodily. “Then I won’t let you.” Slowly she lifted her hands and held them out to him. The finger tips were icy cold to his clasp. He could hear

her quick, unsteady breathing. “Pat! Little Pat!”? he whispered. A smile blossomed upon her curved mouth, tender, trem-

ulous, persuasive. She swayed forward, lifting her face, half closing her eyes. With the gasp of a man whose last strength of restraint is shattered, he enfolded her, crushing his lips down upon hers. Only the one long, slow kiss in the breathless silence,

and all the world forgotten in its ecstasy. Then Pat pressed herself gently back from him, looked eagerly, curiously, triumphantly into his face, and stood clear. “My God, Pat!” he groaned. “I didn’t mean to do that.” “¥. did,” she said. From the roses drooping below her breast she detached a bud, crushed to a perfumed splotch of colour in the fierce pressure of their embrace, and held it out to him. “Keepsake,”

she breathed.

“It’s red, red, red.

It’s

the colour of life. My colour. Pat’s colour. Good-night, Mr. Scott.” “Mister” Scott! After that fusion of lips and longings

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