Flaming Youth

It was to her second daughter that Mona Fentriss made, after due thought, disclosure of her condition. Dee was shocked and incredulous. She had no profound affection for her mot...

Miss Cissie Parmenter strolled down the broad stairs at Holiday Knoll, looking neither to the left nor the right. She was freshly painted with considerable taste, and arrayed wi...

Patricia, home from school for the Easter vacation, slouched against Mary Delia's door as she put her question. The child had begun to take on the florescence of the woman. Her...

Wandering into the drawing-room on one of her infrequent and languid tours of inspection, Constance was astonished to find Mary Delia contemplating herself in the full-length mi...

Slow and stately, the measure of the Lohengrin Wedding March pulsated through the church; much slower and statelier than Herr Wagner ever intended that it should be delivered, u...

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...

"If I could find it in my heart, dearest one, to blame you for anything, it would be for sending little Pat to the Sisterhood School." (So wrote Robert Osterhout to Mona Fentris...

With unwearying strategy Pat made opportunities for being with Scott thereafter. Each time they were together alone she came to his arms as sweetly and naturally as if she claim...

The room was vital with air and fresh with the scent of many flowers. It was a happy room, a loved room, even a petted room. There was about it a sense of stir, of life, of habi...

The Fentriss house stood high on a knoll overlooking the Country Club which constituted Dorrisdale's chief attraction as a suburb. Mona Fentriss had built it with a legacy of $2...

The party was a Bingo. Before midnight that had been settled to the satisfaction of everyone. The music, good at the outset, soon become irresistible. (A drink all around every...

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...

Before she was fully awake next morning Pat had come to a daring resolution. To prepare her way she got up, went to the loggia, and looked in the wood-box. No newspaper was ther...

Again Pat was happy in her engagement. She frequently and insistently assured herself that she was. Certainly she had no just complaint of Monty. He was all that a lover should...

Semicircles of weariness hollowed Robert Osterhout's eyes as he opened the door and entered Mona's room. It had been a hard night for him. Memory had been delicately dissecting...

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 pres...

Moth-like, Patricia hovered around the mystic radiance of Constance's wedding festivities. They had let her come home from school for the occasion. Reckoned too young for a brid...

The episode between Leo Stenak and Patricia Fentriss was headlong as a torrent. She heard him before she saw him; heard, rather, his violin, expression and interpretation of his...

Never in all her career of coquetry had Pat devoted more careful planning than to her meeting with Cary Scott when he should return. At first sight of him all her elaborate camp...

Vagrant airs from the window of the small library playfully stirred the bright tendrils on Constance Fentriss's neck. The girl was a picture of unconscious grace and delight as...

"Some kind of internal explosion has taken place in our little family, dear one (wrote Robert Osterhout to his dead love); and is still taking place, which is rather a deliberat...

Very much did Pat wish to sleep. Until long after midnight she had lain awake, thinking excitedly. To be roused out of the profound oblivion which she had finally achieved, thus...

Consciousness of virtue warmed Pat's heart as she jumped from the train at Dorrisdale and sniffed the shrewd October air with nostrils that quivered like a kitten's. She had bee...

The front door-button was out of commission. Since Constance had come to live at Holiday Knoll, bringing her husband with her and taking over the management of the place, the be...

For two weeks Pat and Scott lived in a paradise of constant dangers and passionate adventure. Fate played into their hands; James, as he recovered a little strength, developed a...

"Wisdom may be where you are, dear and lost one." So wrote Robert Osterhout, seated in Mona Fentriss's sun-impregnated room, which seemed still to be fragrant of her personality...

Ripples from the swimming party spread to wash far shores. Although the participants had been sworn to secrecy, the details had of course been whispered confidentially, adorning...

Throughout the hurried processes of dressing while he breakfasted, Scott strove to quiet and command his thoughts, to find some clue to this tangle of passion wherein he had bec...

"I'm off of men," confidently wrote Pat in her diary. "There's nothing to it for me. From now on I'm going to be so nice and careful and mind-your-steppy that the place won't kn...

What work Osterhout was able to do in the two days following Pat's revelation was mainly mechanical. Neither his mind nor his real interest were enlisted. Pat's supposed situati...

Dawn was tinting the high clouds when Mary Delia awoke. She had the gift of coming forth from sleep in full and instant possession of her faculties. Now she felt that something...

From the time when Dr. Osterhout assured her of her secret's safety, Pat knew that she must tell her fiancé, before the wedding. Some quirk of feminine psychology would have jus...

He walked back with her to Holiday Knoll after dinner. Pat's face was thoughtful, moody. As they paced in silence he studied it intently, with passionate longings, with passiona...

Spring was turbulent in the sap of young trees and the blood of young humans when Mary Delia James rolled along Fifth Avenue in the quietly elegant limousine provided for her sp...

The night was warm, moist, astir with vernal growth. The trees whispered tender secrets to each other. Flowers were being born in the grasses. Clouds formed a light coverlet abo...