e (and the butler), for Dolly, with innate
genius, has given it an air of quiet elegance and culture which he
secretly enjoys. There is, also, a certain contentment in living life
along a definite routine. He flies every night but Sunday, and two
afternoons a week. And then, if Dolly has her house, he has his
automobile.

A big, high-powered, red automobile. He goes out in it with Dolly every
Sunday. When he arrives to a certain point in a certain highway, where
the road is smooth and hard, and undulates up and down like a Coney
Island chute for many miles, he leans forward and puts his chin close to
the back of the chauffeur, who is French, and looks like Mephistopheles.

"Let her out," he says.

The chauffeur, with a grin, "lets her out"--and they swoop down and up,
down and up, in increasing speed. The road is a ribbon, which she rolls
hungrily within her; the trees, the rare houses on both sides, coalesce
into two solid, whirling walls.

"Faster," says Charles-Norton.

The world becomes two parallel planes of solid atmosphere, rushing along
close to right and left; the air strikes their faces like a fist, closing
their nostrils till they gasp; the machine's hum becomes a cry; its flaps
rise like wings.

"Faster," says Charles-Norton.

He seems to leave his body; it wafts off behind on a current of air, like
a hat--and he is only a soul, a delicious kernel of soul ecstatically
drunk, floating like an atom through the eternities.

"Faster," he says.

But he is aware now of a shrill, insistent, strident sound. It drills
into his soul; it will not be quiet; it will not let him be. Bing! His
body, catching up from behind, drops about him again--and then he knows.
It is Dolly; Dolly screaming, poor little Dolly hysterical with fear.

"Slow up," he says to the chauffeur.

The world gradually changes from a mere blur of parallel lines to visible
groupings of matter. Trees, houses, the road, the sky reappear as through
a curtain torn before them. The chauffeur wipes his brow. "Ah,
Monsieur!" he says.

And Dolly, very pale, says with an impatience that seems weary, as though
it were repeating itself for the thousandth time "Oh, Goosie, why, why,
why will you scare me so?"

Charles-Norton is penitent, but a bit morose. "Gee," he says; "that
wasn't fast. That wasn't fast." His eyes go off, very far; a vague, vague
yearning, covered over with layer and layer of resignation, palpitates
faintly at the pit of his b