Flaming Youth

CHAPTER XXVI

"It's unutterably sweet," he said. "It's the companionship that is deeper and more lasting than any other association."

"But there's always been that between us," she mused. "Only, it's different now. I don't quite understand; there's so much I don't understand, Cary, dear. But I know that I want to tell you. I don't believe Dee would mind."

She repeated Dee's bitter protest over James's breach of faith, her refusal to accept maternity, her recent resolution to quit her husband at whatever cost of scandal. "And now she can't," she concluded.

"You mean that she won't."

"Yes. Dee's a good sport. She'll stick to a man when he's down. The worst of it is, she told him why she wouldn't have a baby of his; because he was just a bunch of pure selfishness. And then he goes and pulls a real hero stunt and deliberately throws his life away for a Dago brat—and doesn't save the darn thing, anyway," concluded Pat, her lips quivering. "Where does that leave Dee?"

"Was it what Dee said that drove him to do it?"

"No. It was too quick for that. He did it instinctively. It must have been in him all the while to do the big, self-sacrificing thing when it was put up to him. Like the men on the Titanic that everybody thought were wasters. That's what makes it so rotten for Dee. She thinks she's misjudged him all the time. I believe she'd give her life now to have a child for him."

"Well?" queried Scott.

[Pg 258]
Pat shook a mournful head. "No, never. Not a chance. Haven't I told you? He'll live in a plaster cast the rest of his life if he does live. I wouldn't!... I've had a hell of a time with Dee, Cary."

"Poor darling! Do you think Dee will want to see me?"

"Yes. I'm sure she will. Perhaps not to-day."

"Has this really turned her to James again, Pat?"

"Has it made her really love him, you mean? How could she? Women aren't that way. But all she can think of now is her remorse."

He paced along beside her in deep thought for a time before he said: "Was there any other reason for her leaving him?"

"The other man?" She gave him a quick look. "I suppose that had something to do with it. Cary, was it a rotten trick for Dee to marry Jimmie?"

"I'm afraid it was, rather. Poor child! She's paying for it."

"Do women always pay for it?"

"No. Sometimes the men do."

"You know Dee's man, don't you?"

"Yes."

"Do you know where he is now?"

"Not at this moment. But I know he is intending to come back here in a few days."

"To see Dee?"

"I'm afraid so."

"He mustn't."

"No; he mustn't."

"Can't you stop him?"

"If I can reach him."

"Cary, you must stop him."

"Is she still in love with him?"

"Terribly."

[Pg 259]
"I'll do my best."

At the James house they found Dr. Osterhout. Pat went up to Dee after bidding Cary come to the Knoll directly after dinner. Going out with the physician he asked how serious James's case really was.