Flaming Youth

CHAPTER XIII

Coming out of the concert hall after the last, culminating burst of harmony, Cary Scott drew a deep breath of the night air. Lover and connoisseur of music though he had always been, never in his recollection had it so penetrated his being as now. Better programmes he had listened to, more perfectly rendered. But the companionship of the intensely responsive young girl, her superb and poignant vitality concentrated upon the great waves of sensation which had swept over their spirits, interpreted the numbers for him in a new measure. Timidly, tentatively at first, then more boldly as the ardent influences took hold upon her, Pat had yearned to him in the semi-darkness which surrounded them. The sweet, firm curve of her shoulder first, then the close pressure of her knee; soon her fingers, creeping to his hand, clasping and being enfolded, the fragrance of her light, quick breath, rhythmic upon his cheek. It seemed as if she had become subtly the medium and instrument of all the splendour of sound, as if the music were flowing in the currents of her woman's body out upon him and around him in a submerging flood.

Now they were in the open air. She walked beside him, her face dreamy and demure, the faintest of smiles implicit in the up-slanted corners of her mouth.

"Wasn't it—magic!" she breathed.

"Yes, magic," he assented.

They located and entered his car. For a time the intricacies of the traffic engrossed his attention. As they passed into the light-shot spaciousness of the park he turned to her.

[Pg 138]
"Well?"

"Don't let's talk. I want to just remember."

He nodded and she leaned to him momentarily again, kitten-like, caressing, grateful for his understanding. He, too, was glad of the respite, for, man of the world though he was, he had been strangely, unexpectedly shaken. It was Pat who, long minutes later, sighed and broke the silence with the hoarse, enticing sweetness of her tones.

"What did you do it for, Mr. Scott?"

"I? Do what?" He was surprised by the directness of the attack.

"Oh, well! I, then. You know. What did you let me do it for?"

He made no reply. In his stillness was a sense of expectancy to which she responded.

"I warned you what music did to me. But you—you needn't have let me——" She paused. "Do you like me a little?" she murmured.

"Yes. A little."

"Only a little?" she teased, half child demanding the comfort of affection, half conscious coquette. "Not more than that?"

"Perhaps a little more," he smiled.

"But not half as much as you do Con," she said deliberately.

He was silent, his attention apparently engrossed in a heavy truck which gave them bare passing room.

"Do you?" she insisted, daring greatly.

"Do I what?"

"Like me as much as you do Con? Half as much, I mean."

"If I did do you think I should tell you?"

[Pg 139]
"Why shouldn't you? But I thought you were crazy over Con. She thinks so."

Scott hummed one of the passages from the final number of the concert.

"Oh, very well. I'm only making conversation. I don't really want to talk at all. I'd rather think. All the rest of the way home."

Arrived at Holiday Knoll, he stepped from the car and held out a hand to her. "Good-night, Pat."

"Aren't you coming in?"