fast, and how every shadow was anticipation and every noise
pursuit! For all that flight Mr. Hoopdriver was in the world of
Romance. Had a policeman intervened because their lamps were not
lit, Hoopdriver had cut him down and ridden on, after the fashion
of a hero born. Had Bechamel arisen in the way with rapiers for a
duel, Hoopdriver had fought as one to whom Agincourt was a
reality and drapery a dream. It was Rescue, Elopement, Glory! And
she by the side of him! He had seen her face in shadow, with the
morning sunlight tangled in her hair, he had seen her sympathetic
with that warm light in her face, he had seen her troubled and
her eyes bright with tears. But what light is there lighting a
face like hers, to compare with the soft glamour of the midsummer
moon?

The road turned northward, going round through the outskirts of
Bognor, in one place dark and heavy under a thick growth of
trees, then amidst villas again, some warm and lamplit, some
white and sleeping in the moonlight; then between hedges, over
which they saw broad wan meadows shrouded in a low-lying mist.
They scarcely heeded whither they rode at first, being only
anxious to get away, turning once westward when the spire of
Chichester cathedral rose suddenly near them out of the dewy
night, pale and intricate and high. They rode, speaking little,
just a rare word now and then, at a turning, at a footfall, at a
roughness in the road.

She seemed to be too intent upon escape to give much thought to
him, but after the first tumult of the adventure, as flight
passed into mere steady ridin@@ his mind became an enormous
appreciation of the position. The night was a warm white silence