FLAMING
for the pious!
YOUTH
“The wages of sin is death.’
13
D’you believe
that, Bobs?”
“It’s a usefut bogey to scare people who are more timid than they are wicked.” “I’m not timid,” she proclaimed. “And I don’t feel particularly wicked. Only anxious over how this is going to turn out.” | “What did you do it for, Mona?” he burst out painfully. She gave him a sidelong glance. “Oh, I don’t know. Boredom. And he begged me so. Poor Sid! He does love me.” “The dirty scoundrel! If he loved you, would he——” “Of course he would!” she broke in, with impatient contempt. “Don’t indulge in cheap melodrama. It’s because people are in love that they take risks like this.” “Then you love him,” said Osterhout dolorously. “T don’t know. He sways me. But—I don’t think ’m in love with him, as you mean it.” “Yet you id “Yet I came here with him. Does that seem so terrible to you?” She spoke in a tone of half-tender mockery. “TI can’t understand it, except on the ground that you love him.” “Because you don’t understand me. And there are twenty-one different definitions of love.” “Do you understand yourself?” “Yes; I do,” she asserted thoughtfully and boldly. “And I’m not afraid to accept myself as I am. I don’t shut my eyes to the picture just because it’s my own, I’m not a sneak.” “No. You’re not that.” “And if I take the chances I’m ready to face the conse-
