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204

FLAMING

YOUTH

C

“What could she have been looking for?” he fenced. “Tt was so helpless, so hopeless,” went on the girl; “and yet as if she had one hope left and weren’t going to give up without—without looking.” Osterhout had his own private interpretation of that last, long quest of the bride’s eyes before she turned them to her bridegroom, but he was not going to betray it. “All of us are a little high-strung,” he opined. “Imagining a vain thing. Dee's all right.” He passed on his way. <As if by thought transference there flashed into Scott’s mind the strange passage be tween Dee and the electrical repair man, his old acquaintance, Stanley Wollaston, at the famous Dangerfield “swim au naturel,” and the memory of her possessed, dreamhaunted face. Could T. Jameson James ever evoke that yearning? Scott knew that he could not, and a great pity for Dee filled him. Pat left him, not to return until the party was

dis-

persed, all but a few heavy-drinking remnants who had stood by to help Ralph Fentriss finish up the punch, Later Pat and Cary passed them on their way to the clematis arbour. ‘The girl’s face was sombre and thoughtful. “T wish she hadn*t married him,” she burst out.

Seott sought to reassure her. est.

As

QOsterhout

up——”

said, we’re

“It’s all right, dear all emotionally

stirred

.

“I wish she hadn’t,” persisted the girl. “It must be terrible to go away—like that—with a man—when you don’t love him!”

“Oh, nonsense!

He strove for a light tone.

“She

does love him. Otherwise why on earth should she have married him?” Pat’s brows were knit, her gaze far away, fixed upon

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