ne
198
FLAMING
thoughtfully, “it is.
YOUTH
Though I'm rather for the truth
myself. But there are other things taught in the same school that aren’t so safe. Did you happen to read a fool book called The Salamander some years ago?” Yes; but I didn’t think it so bad.”
“Because you’re a man and don’t understand what the effect of it has been. A Salamander school of fiction and drama has grown out of it. The central idea is that if a girl is ‘pure’ she can get herself into any kind of situation, take any kind of chance with any kind of man, play the game of passion to the limit and yet come out unscathed ;virtue its own safeguard, and that sort of thing. Why I saw a play this winter which was written to prove that a girl of to-day could spend a night alone in a house with a man with whom she was in love without any thought of harm. Yet the censors suppress honest portrayals of life as it really is. It’s a great little world, Cary Scott, if your mind doesn’t weaken. But I think mine has!” Pat, passing by on the arm of a worshipping partner, stopped to give them a smile. “What are you talking about, you two?” “You’ve guessed it; about you,” returned the young aunt.
For a hidden moment Pat’s eyes met Scott’s and shot forth their ardent message before the sweeping lashes curled down. “Leave me a few shreds,” she called back
gaily. “Pat considers herself a miracle of astuteness and knowledge,” pursued the aunt. “Having been taught the gospel of lies and trash, she is sure of her own natural
inviolability.
If anything in the world ought to be banned
from the access of Pat and her kind, it is the Salamanderstory of the Girl Who Always Comes Out Right. It isn’t
