Flaming Youth

CHAPTER XVIII

With unwearying strategy Pat made opportunities for being with Scott thereafter. Each time they were together alone she came to his arms as sweetly and naturally as if she claimed him of right; each time until the evening before the wedding when, as he drew her to him, she twitched away with a boyish, petulant jerk of the shoulders.

"What is it, Pat?" he queried.

"Nothing. I don't want you to pet me. That's all."

He had the acumen to suspect that this might be a first crisis in their newly established relations, though he did not fathom her purpose. "Very well," he assented quietly. "You are quite right, of course."

This did not suit Pat at all. From her youthful suitors she was accustomed to woeful protests. "Am I?" she retorted perversely. "I'm not. There's nothing right about it."

"No. But there is this. I shall never make any claim upon you except as you wish it."

"Well, I don't wish it. Not now." A dart of lightning flashed through her clouded look. "I might to-morrow."

His brows lifted, enquiringly. Mockingly, too? Pat wondered. You never could tell with Mr. Scott. What would he say? He said nothing.

"D'you know what I mean?" demanded Pat, who didn't clearly know herself.

"Perfectly."

"What?"

"Coquetry. That's a form of dishonesty between us.[Pg 189] And between us there is no reason nor place for anything but honesty."

She came to him then, encircled him closely, drew her lips from his, after a time, to murmur: "You understand me so. When you say things like that I'm crazy about you."

Against his better judgment he said: "I wonder how much you really care for me, Pat?"

"Oh, an awful lot! Or I wouldn't be acting like this. But," she added with pensive frankness, "I've been just as crazy about other people before."

"I see. It's the normal thing for you to feel this way toward someone."

"Oh, well; you expect to have somebody in love with you," she explained. "Think how lost you'd feel without it. And it's natural to play back, isn't it? Now I've hurt you." She spoke the words with a kind of remorseful interest as an experimentalist might feel pity for the animal under his knife.

"That doesn't matter. One gets used to being hurt."

All woman, at this she tightened her embrace. "I don't want you to be hurt. I do love you. Only with me it doesn't last. But there's never been anyone who interested me as much as you do. I don't see what you find in me, though."

"'Said the rose to the bee.'" He forced himself to laugh as he gave the quotation. But within, the cold disillusionment of whatever blind hopes he may have felt, which had underlain his passion from the first, asserted itself. What constancy could he expect from this will-of-the-wisp girl? And what could a lasting attraction mean for her except such unhappiness as he knew himself fated to suffer? He took his resolution. Whatever might come to him he must so command himself and his actions[Pg 190] as to safeguard Pat in every possible way. Already, he knew, his intellectual influence over that unsated, groping, casual mind was strong enough to outlast any change in the more purely physical attraction which she felt for him. If he could find the strength to crush down his own passion, he might still mould her to make something of herself, direct her ardent temperament into channels through which she would eventually come to safe harbour. There lies in every man of strong mentality a trace of the pedagogue. Scott had it. If he could not be Pat's lover, he might find some self-sacrificing satisfaction in being her guide and mentor. That he was prepared for self-sacrifice was the best evidence in his own mind of the quality of his love for the girl. In his lesser affairs he had sought only self-satisfaction.