CHAPTER IX

Through the open country Bibbs was borne flying between brown fields
and sun-flecked groves of gray trees, to breathe the rushing, clean
air beneath a glorious sky--that sky so despised in the city, and so
maltreated there, that from early October to mid-May it was impossible
for men to remember that blue is the rightful color overhead.

Upon each of Bibbs's cheeks there was a hint of something almost
resembling a pinkishness; not actual color, but undeniably its
phantom. How largely this apparition may have been the work of the
wind upon his face it is difficult to calculate, for beyond a doubt
it was partly the result of a lady's bowing to him upon no more formal
introduction than the circumstance of his having caught her looking
into his window a month before. She had bowed definitely; she had
bowed charmingly. And it seemed to Bibbs that she must have meant
to convey her forgiveness.

There had been something in her recognition of him unfamiliar to
his experience, and he rode the warmer for it. Nor did he lack the
impression that he would long remember her as he had just seen her:
her veil tumultuously blowing back, her face glowing in the wind
--and that look of gay friendliness tossed to him like a fresh rose
in carnival.

By and by, upon a rising ground, the driver halted the car, then
backed and tacked, and sent it forward again with its nose to the
south and the smoke. Far before him Bibbs saw the great smudge upon