Flaming Youth

CHAPTER XXXII

They had been engaged for four months. On the whole Pat found the status highly satisfactory. Everyone heartily approved the match. Because of Monty's college duties, which pressed sorely upon him as he was having constant difficulty in keeping up, they saw little of each other, a fortunate circumstance, as the glamour of her lover's physical beauty and personal charm persisted in her mind when they were separated, creating a romantic figure, to which no special mental attributes were essential. Had they been thrown more constantly together she might have been disillusioned by the torpid and unimaginative quality of his mind. But in their brief association over week-ends they were surrounded by others, and when they were alone his ardent love-making eked out the scantness of his conversational resources. If, sometimes, Cary Scott's words, "companionship, the rarest thing in life or love," recurred to her, arousing unwelcome questions, she put them away. Scott's image had dimmed again, in the hot radiance of this new attraction; she determinedly kept it far in the background. But there was one unrelenting memory which refused to be permanently immured in the past.

When the time for the wedding was set, mid-June immediately after Monty's graduation (if he succeeded in graduating), she realised that she must face that memory and dispose of it, for her own peace of mind. Her uneasy thoughts turned to Dr. Bobs. Perhaps he could lay the ghost.

[Pg 302]
"Bobs, what do you really think of Monty?" She had gone to his office, nerved up to the interview.

Osterhout considered. "He means well," was his judicial pronunciamento.

"What a rotten thing to say about a girl's best young man! What's the matter with him?"

"Stupid."

"Then you didn't really mean your congratulations."

"Certainly. It's an excellent engagement."

"Am I stupid, Bobs?" she pouted.

"No. But I think you'll be perfectly satisfied with a stupid husband."

"I don't know what makes you so revolting to-day!" complained Pat. "I'd be bored to death with a boob around the house, and you know it. He's not stupid."

"If you're satisfied, I am," said the amiable Bobs. "I don't have to live with him. He's a prize beauty all right. And rich!"

"There you go again. I don't care. (Defiantly) I love Monty, and that's enough. Anyway I didn't come here to talk about him exactly. It's something else. Bobs, do many girls confess to their doctors?"

Osterhout looked up sharply and frowned. Almost word for word Mona had put that same query to him years before. But Pat's face was more child-like, graver, than that of the lovely, laughing, reckless Mona had been.

"Probably more than to their priests," he made reply. "That's what a doctor is for."

"Yes!" she cried eagerly. "Please be just the Fentriss family physician for a few minutes. Make it easy for me, Bobs dear."

Indefinably his manner changed with his next words, became quietly attentive, soothing, almost impersonal as[Pg 303] he said: "Take your time, Pat. And when you're ready, tell me as much or as little as you wish."

"It isn't too easy—even to you. Can't you guess?"

"Ah," said he, after a pause of scrutiny. "So that's it."

"Don't look at me." She put her hands up as if to shield her face from flame. "Just tell me what to do."

"Are you in trouble?"

"Of course," said she impatiently. "Do you think I'd come bothering you—— Oh, no! Not that way. Though it might have happened. Now you do know."