FLAMING
YOUTH
229
Pat fell back into her chair, her brain still whirling. “No. No. No. No. No! Never in this world! I couldn’t even think of it.” “If the idea of me as a pretended husband is so repulsive——” “Tt isn’t. I think you’re divine. I adore you. Not that way, though. And I couldn’t mess things up that way for both of us. I’d kill myself, first.’ She was winning back, though badly jarred, into the drama of it again. “Bobs, you will help me through. 'The—the other way.” “What! <A criminal operation? Why, I couldn’t if T were willing. I’m no obstetrician!” Pat had the grace to turn red. “No. Not you, of course. But if you’d just send me somewhere—to one of the men in the paper i “That would be just as bad.” “Then you’d rather stand by and see me ruined and disgraced,” she cried hotly. With a swift change to beseeching softness she murmured, “Mona would tell you to help me if she were here.” Again Osterhout turned to look out into the colorless tumult of the storm: “You’re wrong, Pat. She wouldn’t. She’d know me better.” “Then what am I going to do?” He prowled up and down the room like an anxious bear. “J don’t know. We'll have to get you away somewhere. How could you be such an infernal little Oh, Bambina! fool? Why didn’t I look after you better?” “Poor old Bobs!” said she softly. ‘How could you know anything about it?” “One thing you absolutely must not do,” he pursued vigorously, “is to go to any of those scoundrelly quacks
in the paper.”
