d, indistinct at the top of their high, broad steps, or back among
the trees of their gardens. Along the front of one stretched a high
hedge of laurestinas black as a ribbon of the night, capacious of
shadows; and it seemed to Flora that all at once a shadow detached
itself. She looked with a start. It flashed along the pavement--if
shadow it were--running head down with a strange, scattering movement of
arms and legs, yet seeming to make such speed that for a moment it kept
abreast of the cab. She could see no features, no lineament of this
strange thing to recognize, yet instantly she knew what it must be--what
she had feared and thought impossible. She thrust her head far out and
addressed the driver.

"Go as fast as you can, faster! and I'll give you twice what he gave
you." The words rang so wildly to her own ears that she half expected
the driver to peer down like an old bird of prey from his perch and
demand her reason. But he made no sound or sign. It may have been that
in his time he had heard even wilder requests than hers. He only sent
his whip cracking forward to the ears of the lean horse, and the cab
began to rattle like a mad thing.

Flora leaned back with a sigh of relief. The mere sensation of being
borne along at such a rate, the sight of houses, lamp-posts, even people
here and there, flitting away from the eye, unable to interrupt her
course, or even to glimpse her identity, gave her a feeling of safety.
The more she was getting into the residence part of the city, the more
deserted the streets, the closer shut the windows of the houses, the
more it seemed to her as if the night itself covered and abetted her
flight. So swiftly she went it was only a wonder how the cab held
together. She had never traveled more rapidly in her light and silent
carriage. Now they whirled the corner and plunged at the steep rise of a
cross street. Just above, over the crown of the hill, she saw the sky,
moonless, blackish, spattered with stars. Then against it a little
fluttering shape like a sentinel wisp--the only living thing in sight.
It was incredible, impossible, horrible that he should be there, in
front of her, waiting for her, who had driven so fast--too fast, it had
seemed, for human foot to follow. By what unimaginable route had he
traveled? She was ready to believe he had flown over the housetops. And
above all other horrors, why was he pursuing her?

The carriage was abreast the Chinaman now, and immediat