86
FLAMING
YOUTH
“We Fentrisses are terribly American. want us to reclaim you?” “Would you? Then I may come back?”
“You must.
Don’t
you
Father will want to see you.”
“And I him. He is well?” “Very. Where can he find you?” “At the St. Regis for a few days.”
‘Do you think a few days enough to re-Americanize you?” “Say a few years, then.” He rose and turned to give a long look at the portrait of Mona Fentriss which he
had set on the table. “You have been more than kind to me,” he said gravely. “I cannot thank you enough.” “I’m afraid I was clumsy and abrupt.” He shook his head. “It must have been a shock to you.” “Yes. But—dreams do not die. And [I still keep the dream. And perhaps’—he lifted an appealing gaze to her—‘perhaps, as a legacy, some littie part of the friendship. I may hold that as a hope?” “Yes,” said Constance.
Her fingers stirred in his as he bent and touched light lips to her hand. Out into the tumultuous night Cary Scott carried two pictures, mother and daughter, strangely alike, strangely different, which interchanged and blended and separated
again, like the evanescence of sunset-hued clouds. But it was the visual memory of the living woman which eventually held his inner eye, the pure, smooth contour of her face, the sumptuous curves of the figure beneath the suave folds of the clinging robe, the chaste line of the lips contradicted by the half-veiled sensuality of the wide, humid, deer-soft eyes. A delicate, but unsatisfied sensuality which might yet, as he read it, break down under provocation into reckless self-indulgence. Sensitive by nature
