rather than direction being my object for the moment,
Otty, I rejoiced in a clear thoroughfare and let her rip for Putney
Bridge. There was a communication tube in the taxi, and for some
while it had been whistling in my ear, with calls and outcries in
high falsetto interjected between the blasts. 'Funny dog's
ventriloquising,' thought I, and paid no further attention to the
noises. Our pace was such, I couldn't be distracted from the
steering. . . . I was quite sober by this time: sober, but
considerably exhilarated.

"My spirit soared as we took the bridge with a rush, cleared the High
Street and breasted Putney Hill for the Heath. The night was clear,
with a southerly breeze. The stars shone, and I seemed to inhale all
the scents of a limitless prairie, wafted past the wind-screen from
the heath and the stretch of Wimbledon Common beyond. . . . Why
should I miss anything of this glorious chance? Why should I tamely
deliver Farrell at a house the name of which I had forgotten, the
situation of which was unknown to me, the domestics of which, when I
found it by painful inquiry, would probably receive me with cold
suspicion, as a misleader of middle-age? In fine, why should I not
strike the Common and roam there, letting the good car have her head
while Farrell slept himself sober. A line or two of the late Robert
Browning's waltzed in my head:"

'What if we still ride on, we two?'
'--Ride, ride together, for ever ride.'

"I brought the car gently to a halt on the edge of the heath, under
the stars, climbed out, and opened the door briskly.

"'Look here, Farrell,' I announced. 'I've a notion--'

"'Then it's more than _I_ have, of the way you're treating a lady!'
answered a voice; and out stepped a figure in skirts! By George,
Otty, you might have knocked me down with a--with a feather boa:
which was just what this apparition seemed preparing to do.
I had brought the taxi to rest close under a gas-lamp, and in the
light of it she confronted me, slightly swaying the hand which
grasped the boa.

"'Good Lord! ma'am,' I gasped,' how in the world . . . ?'

"'That's what I want to know,' said she, with more show of menace.
'What is your game, young man? Abduction?'

"'I swear to you, ma'am,' I stammered, 'that my intentions would be
strictly honourable if I happened to have any. . . . I may be more
intoxicated than I felt up to a moment ago. . . . But let us, at all
events, keep our heads.