as not coming in, that her feet were as warm
as toast. How often he had steered slowly with one hand, while her
fingers crept into the palm of the other. And then he had turned off the
engine and they had sat there together silent and alone, cut off from
the world. How she had loved his motor! Surreptitiously she would caress
it with her hand, stroking the cool shiny leather, and seeing him
looking at her, she would say, "I think my purse must have fallen behind
the seat." It had become to her a child and a mother, a refuge and an
adventure, an island cut off from all the wretched necessities of
existence, associated only with her and with him. It was a much better
kingdom than a room; for a room is full of paraphernalia and
impedimenta, with books and photographs, and the envelopes of letters to
remind you of people and things that you want to forget. After all she
could not sweep her house clear of her life, empty it of the necessary
and the superfluous of her ties and her duties and her responsibilities.

But his motor--his little gasping uncomfortable motor--that was really
and truly hers, because it was his. Here was her throne and his altar.

No wonder she sometimes stroked it a little, when it was too dark for
him to ask her what she was doing.

And now, now some one else crept in after him, slid towards him on the
shiny leather, murmured that her feet were as warm as toast, that there
was no draught, and of course the rain didn't come in....

Or did she say, "Do you think there is something the matter with your
motor to-day? It seems a little asthmatic?"

Eve looked at the house. She could see brightness shining behind the
curtains. She could imagine a glowing fire and a faint smell of warm
roses. Who was the woman? What were they doing? Sitting on either side
of the fireplace drowsily intimate, smiling a little perhaps and hardly
talking, conscious only of the cold outside and the warm room and one
another....

Eve shivered. Almost unconsciously she fingered the mud guard. "A room
is a horrible unprivate thing," she said. "People walk in and out of it,
any one, and there are books and photographs and letters. It is a
market place, not a sanctuary,--whereas you...." She looked at the
little motor. It was too dark to see anything, but every line of it was
branded on her heart.

"No one will ever love you as I did," she said to it and slowly,
wearily, dragging one foot after another, she walked away into th