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FLAMING

YOUTH

215°

anyway; the marriage may yet be a success. If it is, credit to Pat. But imagine the Bambina becoming the managing director of the family, the schemer for happiness, the adjuster of difficulties. She bosses Ralph within an inch of his life. All of this does not seem to interfere with her raids upon the male portion of the community, who clutter up the place largely. “Cary Scott has quit us.) Why,Ido not know. Can it be that he was seriously interested in Dee? ‘There is no doubt of her strong liking for him, but I would have sworn that it was quite unsentimental. Possibly his feeling was deeper; the abrupt cure of his infatuation for Connie has

never been clear to me. In any case, I miss him. He has brains and charm and, I think, character. Atmosphere, too, which the men of our lot lack.

I’ve had a letter or

two: from him from California. ‘Through a.friend who lives in Paris I have heard about his marriage, too. His wife is of the leech type, a handsome, heartless, useless, shrewd beast who hates him because he revolted against her taking everything and giving nothing, and who will never, out of sheer spite, give him his divorce. They say he has amused himself widely; yet he retains a reputation for decency even in the more rigid circles of the foreign community there. “That queer little mystery of Pat’s mind-reading of which I wrote you, remains unsolved. I have tried to catch her napping on it; made careless mention of having talked with her before about marrying a man of thirty. But she is not to be trapped; maintains an obstinate reserve. Jt is too much for me. She is developing fast, but into what I cannot say. Conscious, conquering womanhood, I should say; yet she is still so much the simple, willful child with it all,

What

I fear for her is

the difficulty of adjustment to life when she meets with