the sharp wind behind her, her eyes intent on the white stretch
that leaped up in front of the lamps like a blank wall beyond
which there was nothing but dense oblivion. But for the fact that
she knew that this road ran straight and unobstructed into the
outskirts of New York, she might have lost courage and decision. The
natural confidence of an experienced driver was hers. She had the
daring of one who has never met with an accident, and who trusts to
the instincts rather than to an actual understanding of conditions.
With her, it was not a question of her own capacity and strength,
but a belief in the fidelity of the engine that carried her forward.
It had not occurred to her that the task of guiding that heavy,
swerving thing through the unbroken road was something beyond her
powers of endurance. She often had driven it a hundred miles and
more without resting, or without losing zest in the enterprise:
then why should she fear the small matter of thirty miles, even
under the most trying of conditions?

The restless, driving desire to be as far as possible from that
horrid sight at the inn, with all that went to make it repellant,
put strength into her arms. The car swung from one side of the road
to the other, picking its way through the opaque desert, reeling
from rut to rut past hideous shadows and deeper into the black
abyss that lay ahead. No friendly light gleamed by the wayside; the
world was black and cold and dead. She alone was on the highway,
the only human creature who defied the night. Off there on either
side people lived, and slept, and were in darkness just as she was,
but not in dreadful darkness. They were not pursued by ghosts; they
were not running away from a Thing! They slept and were at peace,
and their lights were out for they were not afraid in the dark.
She thought of it: she was alone! No other creature was abroad--not