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FLAMING

YOUTH

“T don’t know that it is,” he muttered. “But there’s another question of honour now, a paramount question,

between you and me.” “Tell me why it wouldn’t be honourable to use your evidence,” persisted Pat, ignoring the other issue. “You’re making it very hard. It’s true that she-—my wife—has been unfaithful. But that was after we had been long separated in everything but the formalities, and morally I was in no position to blame her.” “You’d been untrue to her?” Ves.’

‘With another woman. Were you very much in love with her, Cary, the other woman?” she asked wistfully. For a moment he hesitated, too long a moment, for a flash of hateful intuition shot through Pat’s quick brain. “There was more than one. There may have been a dozen. Oh, I think you’re revolting!” “I’m not going to lie to you, Pat. I regarded myself as free of all responsibility to hen——” “You’re free of all responsibility to me,” she choked. “Don’t think that I want . “No. I am bound to you by the strongest tie I have ever known. I love you.” ““You’ve loved a hundred other women,” charged Pat, savagely revelling in her exaggeration. “Pve loved no one as I love you.” Despite the banality of the words there was in his speech a quiet force that calmed and convinced her. “Not so that I ever wished to be free and marry.” “Of course,” she said loftily, “there’s no reason why I should be jealous of your past.” “Tt is your future that I have been jealous of always,” he replied. “That is a thousand times harder to bear. And now I am asking you to give it to me.”