shall have water on both knees, a glass eye and a mouth full of
store teeth. But you don't care, you Hun. You like it."

And on she went, at the top of her voice, in an endless flow of
farce and tragedy, crying and laughing, examining herself with eager
hands, disbelieving more and more in the fact that she was still in
the only world that mattered to her.

Having succeeded in backing his dented car out of the debris,
Oldershaw leaped out. His face had been cut by the glass of the
broken windshield. Blood was trickling down his fat, good-natured
face. His hat was smashed and looked like that of the tramp cyclist
of the vaudeville stage. "All my fault, old man," he said in his
best irrepressible manner, as a policeman bore down upon him. "Help
me to hike our prostrate friend into my car, and I'll whip him off
to a hospital. He's only had the stuffing knocked out of him. It's
no worse than that. . . . That's fine. Big chap, isn't he--weighs a
ton. I'll get off right away, and my friend there will give you all
you want to know. So long." And off he went, one of his front wheels
wabbling foolishly.

The policeman was not Irish or German-American. He was therefore
neither loud nor browbeating. He was dry, quiet and accurate, and it
seemed to Martin that either he didn't enjoy being dressed in a
little brief authority or was a misanthrope, eager to return to his
noiseless and solitary tramp under the April stars. Martin gave him
Oldershaw's full name and address and his own; and the girl, still
shrill and shattered, gave hers, after protesting that all
automobiles ought to be put in a gigantic pile and scrapped, that
all harum-scarum young men should be clapped in bed at ten o'clock