Rouen-ward seemed
to be past as quickly as motors that bore down on us. Hardly had I
espied in the landscape ahead a chateau or other object of interest
before I was craning my neck round for a final glimpse of it as it
faded on the backward horizon. An endless uphill road was breasted and
crested in a twinkling and transformed into a decline near the end of
which our car leaped straight across to the opposite ascent,
and--"James!" again, and again by degrees the laws of nature were
reestablished, but again by degrees revoked. I did not doubt that
speed in itself was no danger; but, when the road was about to make a
sharp curve, why shouldn't Pethel, just as a matter of form, slow down
slightly, and sound a note or two of the hooter? Suppose another car
were--well, that was all right: the road was clear; but at the next
turning, when our car neither slackened nor hooted and WAS for an
instant full on the wrong side of the road, I had within me a
contraction which (at thought of what must have been if--) lasted
though all was well. Loath to betray fear, I hadn't turned my face to
Pethel. Eyes front! And how about that wagon ahead, huge hay-wagon
plodding with its back to us, seeming to occupy whole road? Surely
Pethel would slacken, hoot. No. Imagine a needle threaded with one
swift gesture from afar. Even so was it that we shot, between wagon
and road's-edge, through; whereon, confronting us within a few
yards--inches now, but we swerved--was a cart that incredibly we grazed
not as we rushed on, on. Now indeed I had turned my eyes on Pethel's
profile; and my eyes saw there that which stilled, with a greater
emotion, all fear and wonder in me.

I think that for the first instant, oddly, what I felt was merely
satisfaction, not hatred; for I all but asked him whether, by not
smoking to-day, he had got a keener edge to his thrills. I understood
him, and for an instant this sufficed me. Those pursed-out lips, so
queerly different from the compressed lips of the normal motorist, and
seeming, as elsewhere last night, to denote no more than pensive
interest, had told me suddenly all that I needed to know about Pethel.
Here, as there,--and, oh, ever so much better here than there!--he
could gratify the passion that was in him. No need of any
"make-believe" here. I remembered the queer look he had given when I
asked if his gambling were always "a life-and-death affair." Here was
the real thing, the authentic ga