elf pulled into the
car; the door banged, the engine started with a smooth sound of
powerful machinery, the car leaped forward. Sylvia cast one backward
glance at Morrison, an annoyed, distinguished, futile presence,
standing motionless, and almost instantly disappearing in the distance
in which first he, and then the house and tall poplars over it, shrank
to nothingness.

Their speed was dizzying. The blazing summer air blew hot and vital in
their faces; their hair tugged at the pins and flew back in fluttering
strands; their thin garments clung to their limbs, molded as closely
by the compressing wind as by water. Molly did not turn her eyes from
the road ahead, leaping up to meet them, and vanishing under the car.
She tried to make a little casual talk: "Don't you love to let it out,
give it all the gas there is?" "There's nothing like a quick spin for
driving the nightmares out of your mind, is there?" But as Sylvia made
no answer to these overtures (the plain fact was that Sylvia had no
breath for speech,--for anything but a horrified fascinated glare at
the road), she said suddenly, somberly, "If I were you, I certainly
should despise me!" She took the car around a sharp curve on two
wheels.

Sylvia clutched at the side and asked wonderingly, "_Why_ in the
world?" in a tone so permeated with sincerity that even Molly felt it.

"Don't you _know_?" she cried. "Do you mean to say you don't _know_?"

"Know _what_?" asked Sylvia. Hypnotized by the driver's intent and
unwavering gaze on the road, she kept her own eyes as fiercely
concentrated, her attention leaping from one quickly seen, instantly
disappearing detail to another,--a pile of gravel here,--a half-buried
rock there.--They both raised their voices to be heard above the sound
of the engine and the rush of the car. "Know what?" repeated Sylvia
loudly.

"Why do you _suppose_ I made myself ridiculous by pulling you away
from Felix that idiotic, humiliating way!" Molly threw this inquiry
out, straight before her, angrily. The wind caught at her words and
hurled them behind.

In a flash Sylvia understood something to which she had been
resolutely closing her perceptions. She felt sick and scared. She
clutched the side, watched a hill rise up steep before them and
flatten out under the forward leap of the car. She thought hard.
Something of her little-girl, overmastering horror of things, rough,
outspoken, disagreeable, swept over her. She violently wished