screen while the nurses
cut his clothes off. It seemed to her hours before the young house
surgeon emerged, shaking his head.

"Fracture of the base," he said. "If he gets through the next
twenty-four hours he'll have a 60 per cent chance," and he hurried away
to telephone the details to his chief.

As she sat there she realized that her own body was sore and stiff. She
must have wrenched herself, or struck the steering wheel in the sudden
turn of the car. She felt suddenly exhausted. There seemed no point in
waiting. They could telephone her the result of the night. She left her
name and address and went home by train.

She made a vow to herself that she would never drive a car again. She
would not explain it or discuss it, but nothing should ever induce her
to touch a steering wheel. It was an inadequate expiation. Every time
she shut her eyes she saw that heap of blood and steel at the foot of
the telegraph pole. Oh, if time could only be turned back so that she
could be starting a second time from Eleanor's door! It never crossed
her mind that this terrible personal misfortune which had befallen her
made her seriously amenable to the law.

CHAPTER VIII

Drummond died late in the evening. An account of the accident was in the
headlines of the morning papers. Unfortunately for Lydia, he was a
conspicuous local figure. He had had the early popularity of a
good-looking, dissipated boy, and then he had been one of the men who
had not waited for the draft but had volunteered and gone into the
Regular Army, and had come home from France unwounded, with a heroic
record. Moreover, there had been a long boy-and-girl love affair between
him and Alma Wooley, the daughter of the hardware merchant. Mr. Wooley,
who was a native Long Islander, hard and wise, had been opposed to the
engagement until, after the war, the return of Drummond as a hero made
opposition impossible. It was at this point that O'Bannon had come to
the rescue, securing the position of traffic policeman for the young
man. The marriage was to have taken place in June.

Before Drummond died he recovered consciousness long enough to recognize
the pale girl at his beside and to make an ante-mortem statement as to
the circumstances of the accident.

Eleanor heard of the accident in the evening, but did not know of
Drummond's death until early the following morning. She called up
O'Bannon, but he had already left his house. At the office she was aske