n road, not more than a mile from the hotel, Pinckney
saw ahead of them, coming in a light trotting buggy of the sort that
one associates with the gentry who call themselves "sports," two of the
gentlemen whom he had met at Breeze's dinner the night before. Whether
Miss Warfield also knew them he did not know; but they evidently had
more wine than was good for them, and were driving along in a reckless
manner on the wrong side of the road. The buggy was much too narrow for
the two; and the one that was driving leaned out toward them with a
tipsy leer. Pinckney shouted at him, but Miss War-field drove calmly
on. He was on the point of grasping the reins, but a look of hers
withheld him, and he sat still, wondering; and in a moment their small
front wheel had crashed through both the axles and spider-web wheels of
the trotting buggy. The shock of the second axle whirled them round,
and Pinckney fell violently against the dasher, while Miss Warfield was
thrown clear of the phaeton on the outer side. But she had kept the
reins, and before Pinckney could get to her she was standing at her
horses' heads, patting their necks calmly, with a slight cut in her
forehead where she had fallen, and only her nostril quivering like
theirs, as the horses stood there trembling. The buggy was a wreck, and
the horse had disappeared; and the two men, sobered by the fall, came
up humbly to her to apologize. She heard them silently, with a pale
face like some injured queen's; and then, bowing to them their
dismissal, motioned Pinckney into the phaeton, which, though much
broken, was still standing, and, getting in herself, drove slowly home.

"She might have killed herself," thought Pinckney, but he held his
peace, as if it were the most natural course of action in the world. To
tell the truth, under the circumstances he might have done the same
alone.

Then it began. Pinckney could not keep this woman out of his head. He
would think of her at all times, alone and in company. Her face would
come to him in the loneliness of the sea, in the loneliness of crowds;
the strong spirit of the morning was hers, and the sadness of the
sunset and the wakeful watches of the night. Her face was in the clouds
of evening, in the sea-coal fire by night; her spirit in the dreams of
summer morns, in the hopeless breakers on the stormy shores, in the
useless, endless effort of the sea. Her eyes made some strange shining
through his dreams; and he would wake wi