Faint spice of budding clematis was fragrant in the air at Holiday Knoll. On her way to the street Pat passed through the arbour with a little, warm shiver of recollection. How long ago that other October seemed, that night when, amidst the scents and seductions of the year's late warmth she had opened her arms and her lips to Cary Scott in that first, unforgettable red kiss of their passion; how far away; how deep buried under other, varied experiences! Would he ever come back? It was many weeks since James had talked of him, suggesting the possibility, and the subject had not again been brought up. Would she really want him back if she could have him? And what would she do with him if he came? Or he with her? Or fate with them both? Pat had become a good deal of a fatalist. It was a convenient theory and dovetailed neatly with her religion, enabling her to compound with her conscience at the smallest expense of self-blame. Fate, she felt, had saved her from marrying Monty Standish, which was a large count to its credit.

Chiefly because of Monty she was now going down to the village. For he was due back after a long absence for repairs to his damaged heart, and the local old cats had prophesied that Pat would leave town, for a time anyway, "if she possesses a grain of decent feeling." Pat purposed to do nothing of the sort. Neither Monty Standish nor any other living specimen of the male sex could run her off the public streets! For excuse she had some marketing to do, and she set forth with her most nonchalant air and independent shoulder swing. She'd show 'em whether she was ashamed or afraid to meet Monty! After pervading the town for a while she would run over for her daily chatter with Jimmie-jams. Jimmie was growing very frail and weary and had a look of eager, anxious expectancy, these days. Pat thought that she knew what he was waiting for. There would be a big void in her life when Jimmie got his release.

Emerging from the fruit shop where she hoped to find an avocado pear for him, she saw a man standing on the curb. His back was turned, but there was that in the set of his shoulders, the slender grace of the figure, the poise of the head which startled her heart to one great throb of excited delight. Here, indeed, was relief from dull days, food for that greed of excitement, of "thrill," which life had not yet begun to sate for her.

"Mist-er Scott!"

He whirled about. His face lighted up. Taking the hand which she held out, he said, with the old, mocking half-lift of the brows:

"Still that, Pat?"

"What are you doing in Dorrisdale?"

"I've just been telephoning Miss Patricia Fentriss."

"She's out."

"So I was informed. I begin to suspect it's true."

Both laughed. Pat, quite charmed with herself for the light and easy manner in which she was carrying off this potentially difficult situation, committed the error of looking up into his eyes. There she read a hunger and a want that made her avert her gaze. She sought hurriedly for something to say.

"I didn't even know that you were in this country."

"I wasn't until last night." He had fallen into step beside her.

"I was going to the Jameses'," she remarked a little lamely. "I go there every morning."

"Yes; I know. James has written me. You make life bearable for him. It's rather wonderful of you, Pat."

"I like to go there," she said in disclaimer of his praise. "Will you come with me?"

"Yes; if I may."

For two squares that was his only remark. Pat grew restless.

"You're not too conversational," she complained.

"I was thinking," he said quietly; "how very lovely you've grown."

"Have I, Cary?" The soft echo of the old, throaty crow was in her voice. "I ought to be a ruin. I've had troubles enough."

"Troubles? You? Haven't you been well?"

"D'you think that's the only kind of trouble a girl can have? There are others! I came near having the worst of 'em four months ago."

"Why then?"

"Date of my wedding," said Pat briefly, with intent to create a sensation. She failed.

"Yes; I heard you were to have been married," he remarked calmly.

"And the rest of it?"

"That you broke off your engagement? Yes."

"Who told you?"

"I found a letter when the ship docked. From James."

Pat's eyes snapped with suspicion. "Did Jimmie write you to come back here? From Europe, I mean."

"He cabled."

"Jimmie's a—— Never mind what he is. I'll tell him to his face, when we get there."

But when they got there T. Jameson James, it seemed, was not feeling very brisk. Well enough to have them come up to his room; oh, yes, that; and warmly glad to see Scott again. After a few moments' talk, however, he displayed symptoms of weariness. He even hinted that he would be better off for the time without visitors.

Pat, with the perverseness of her excitement and anticipations, insisted on staying to read to her brother-in-law as usual. This he vetoed outright.

"No. I don't want you. I'm sleepy. Take Scott over to the Knoll for luncheon. He's probably famished. And Dee had to go to town, so there's nothing to be had here. Run along."

Her hand being thus forced, Pat issued the invitation, and she and Scott left the sick-room. But they had not reached the front door when she turned and darted upstairs again. Throwing herself down by the cripple's couch she caught his head to her bosom and cherished it there.

"Oh, Jimmie! You promise-breaker. You old liar! I adore you." She pressed a swift kiss on his cheek and was gone.

Mr. T. Jameson James made a face at the Devil and chuckled himself to sleep.

Rejoining Scott outside Pat commanded: "Tell me everything you've been doing in the big, big world."

He was unprotestingly obedient, cheerfully impersonal throughout the walk to the Knoll. But never had she been more conscious of the quiet compulsion of his charm. Her arms ached for him. They entered the house by the side door. Instinctively Pat turned toward the conservatory, but some inexplicable revulsion of feeling checked her.

"No; not there," she said. "Let's go to the library."

No sooner had the door closed behind them, than she turned to his embrace not so much yielding to as claiming him back. After the long kiss she stood away from him, but with her hands still clinging upon his shoulders.

"That makes it seem all real again," she breathed.

"Have you grown so far away from me as that, my darling?"

"Well, I was going to marry Monty Standish, you know," she reminded him.

"Yes. Why didn't you?"

"I couldn't. You were in the way."

"Pat! That's what I've feared and dreaded more than——"

"Wait. It isn't what you think. And it isn't all. Before I was engaged to Monty I ran away with a boy to Boston. And you spoiled that."

"I don't understand," he said dully.

"I left him before—well, before anything. Because"—she whirled away from him, flung herself upon the lounge, and blew him an airy kiss—"because I happened to think of you at the wrong time. Or perhaps it was the right time. Anyway, his collar gaped. Like a sick fish. And yours always set so beautifully. So I beat it." She was all petite gamine now. "You're always getting in my way, Cary. Aren't you 'shamed?"

He smiled at her his little twisted, tolerant smile. "You don't change much, do you, little Pat?"

"Oh, I'm fer-rightfully changed. Much more serious. Years older. Lost my girlish illusions. All that sorta thing. You won't like me nearly as much, you're so serious yourself." Her eyes blazed with enjoyment of the situation and the excitement of his proximity. "Most of the time I haven't believed it, though. Have you?"

"Believed what, Pat?"

"About us. All of it, I mean. That we were—lovers. It got to seem like a dream to me; something way, far off. In another life. Or like something that had happened to some other girl. It didn't seem real to me, not even when I told Monty."

"Ah, you told him?"

"Had to. What'd you think I'd do?"

"Knowing your courage and honour, that's what I'd think you'd do."

The hard, excited glitter softened out of her eyes. "I knew you'd want me to, Cary. Of course I never told him who the man was."

"And is that what——"

"What broke the engagement? It did for a while. Then he came back. But I couldn't stand it. Nothing above the ears, Cary. It wasn't even the First Dreaming for me. You remember what you said that day you drove me over to Cissie's about my marrying, and about keeping you in the background of my mind?"

"Yes."

"But you don't stay there," she complained childishly. "You're always popping out and spoiling things." She gave him a challenging look. "I was sort of keeping you for my Second Dreaming."

Scott laughed. "Pat, dearest, are you flirting with me after I've come four thousand miles——"

"What did you come for?"

"For you."

Her loosely clasped hands stirred and parted. "Well—here I am."

"That's not enough."

"You don't want much, do you?" she murmured.

"Everything or nothing now. You know I'm free."

She nodded. "I can see what's coming," she said with a pretence of demureness. "If you've hopped across those four thousand miles from a sense of duty to the weeping girl that you left behind——"

"Pat!"

"Don't bark at me. It frazzles my nerves. I haven't done any weeping over you, Cary. Too busy with the thrills of life. Would you have come back, I wonder, if you could have known everything that's been going on. Suppose I'd stayed in Boston that time?"

"Well?"

"Wouldn't that make a difference?"

"In my wanting to marry you? No."

"Suppose," she said more slowly, "I'd had an affair, a real affair with Monty. Like ours."

A spasm of pain passed over his face. "I shouldn't blame you. How could I?"

"Wouldn't it make any difference in your loving me?"

"Not an iota."

"Wouldn't you even care?" she flashed in resentful wrath.

"Care? Good God, Pat, if you saw a man in torture——"

"Oh, don't, Cary, dear," she cried, startled and remorseful. "It isn't true. It's just my sneaking, rotten curiosity to know how you'd feel about it." She pursed her lips, musing darkly. "I wonder," she began. "Have you been true to me? Not that I've got any right to ask or that it makes a bit of difference in my young life whether you have or not, but just——"

She broke off, leaning forward, studying his face as he looked at her in silence.

"Cary! Why don't you say something? I would care. I'd care like hell."

"I came back," he said slowly, "because you are the one and only woman in the world for me and always have been since I saw you. Is that enough answer?"

"From any other man in the world it wouldn't be an answer at all. From you it's enough."

"Will you marry me, Pat?"

She jumped to her feet, walked over to the window, and looked out to where the clematis blooms trembled in the wind.

"Oh, I suppose so," she said fretfully. "If you want to take the chance."

"What chance, dear love?"

"The chance every man takes that marries a girl of the kind you men all seem to want to marry. How many of the married set here d'you suppose are true to their husbands?"

"I don't like you cynical, Pat. You've been letting something poison your mind."

"Not me. I see things as they are; that's all. Ask Con. Ask Dee. Ask Bobs. Ask any of 'em. You know you could have had Con if you'd really wanted her. And then I butted in." Her chuckle was full of diablerie. It still persisted in her tone as she continued: "Cary, what would you do to me if I went straying off the reservation after we were married?"

"Nothing."

"Oh, don't be so calm and superior and noble about it," she fretted. "You'd tempt an angel to try a flutter just to see whether she would get by with it."

"What do you want me to say, Pat?"

"I want you to tell me honestly how you think you're going to hold me if I do marry you."

"Come over here."

She walked across to him, defiant, daring, provocative. "Well?"

"You love me, don't you, Pat?"

"You make me when you're with me."

"And when I'm not?"

"That's just the trouble. You're there all the time, parked just around the corner and you won't let me love anybody else enough to—to do any good."

"And if I asked you now," he said, low and insistent, "you'd come back to me and be to me what you were before. Wouldn't you?"

There was a quickening in her shadowed eyes, in her soft breathing. "You know I would," she whispered. "How could I help myself?"

"Then you couldn't very well marry anyone else, could you?"

"I've tried. It was a fliv, as you know. What's the answer?"

"Isn't it plain enough? Why not try me—on your own terms?"

"Where do you get that 'own term' stuff, Cary?" she demanded suspiciously. "Do you know about Dee and Jimmie; their arrangement?"

"No."

"It's a secret. But you belong to us," she added sweetly; "to the Fentrisses. So I'll tell you. They were to stay married for a month and after that if either of them wanted to quit, they were just to live like unmarried people without any fuss. Only Jimmie wouldn't keep to it. That's what made the row."

"Would you like to try that plan?" he asked in an inscrutable tone.

"Would you do it?" She looked at him doubtfully. "Would you really let me go after a month if I wanted to?"

"After a day. Do you think I'd try to hold you against your wish?"

"Then I don't think you can love me much," she objected with perverse jealousy.

"It strikes me as a perfectly fair bargain to both. I certainly ought to be willing to take the chance," he said reasonably, "if you are."

"If I am! Cary! You mean that you—might—want—to leave me?" A startled incredulity made the words jerky.

"One can never be quite certain how these things are going to turn out, can one?" he observed with a fine air of judicial detachment. "Shall I have my lawyer draw the agreement?"

"Cary; you're laughing at me," she accused.

"Far be it from me, in a matter of such serious import——"

"You are! You're hateful! It isn't fair. You know that's the way to hold me and you know you don't mean to let me get loose for a single minute. I don't like your knowing so dam' much about women," she continued plaintively. "It makes it so uneven."

"I'm trying to be fair," he pointed out. He drew a chair up to the writing desk. "Suppose I just sketch out the scheme. 'This agreement,' he dictated to himself, speaking the words slowly, 'between Patricia Fentriss——'"

"Scott," she interposed.

"—Scott—thank you, dearest—and—Cary—Scott—for—the—space—of—one—month—after——"

She bent across his shoulder, put a soft hand over his mouth, then slipped it aside to make place for the yearning of her own lips. When she finally leaned back from him it was to say judicially:

"I offer an amendment. Let's make it twenty years instead of a month. But, oh, Cary, darling!" Her eyes darkened, brooded, dreamed, grew sombre, subtle, prophetic as she gave voice to her warning. "As a husband you'll have to be a terribly on-the-job lover. There are so many men in the world!"

FINIS