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FLAMING

throat.

“I don’t care.

YOUTH

Tl come,

293°

Oniy—don’t rush me.

Give me time.” They parted with the one kiss of that embrace. In-stantly she had agreed, the spirit of adventure rose within her. She was recklessly jubilant. Three days of alternating morbid self-examinatior and flushed excitement followed. She looked forward to the: meeting net so much with conscious physical anticipation as with the sense of something vivid and bold and new coming, as relief, into the too monotonous pattern of life. The rendezvous was arranged by letter. She was to: take a late afternoon train, and he was to be at the Back.

Bay to meet her.

Looking from the window as the train pulled in she: saw him restlessly pacing the platform on the wrong side. He had on a new overcoat which did not fit him and was. incongruously glossy as compared with his untidy hair and rumpled soft hat. As his coat slumped open, shewas conscious of an unpressed suit underneath. Probably greasy! At the moment he dropped one of the brand new gloves in his hand—she could not recall ever having: seen him wear gloves—and bent awkwardly to recover it. His head protruded; his collar, truant from its retaining rear button, hunched mussily up, and she looked down with a dismal revulsion of the flesh, upon an expanse of sallow, shaven neck.

Unbidden, vividly intrusive, there rose to the eyes of her quickening imagination the image of Cary Scott, always impeccable of dress and carriage, hard-knit of frame, exhaling the atmosphere of smooth skin and hard: muscle. In fancy she breathed the very aroma of hin,, clean, tingliy ¢, masculine, and felt again the imperative claim of his urms.