touch like a live thing, then began slowly to back out into the
road. For an instant it seemed to hang palpitant on dead center,
then shot out like a hound unleashed, _ventre-a-terre_,--
Brooklyn miles away over the hood.

It seemed but a minute ere they were thundering over the Myannis
bridge. A little further on Maitland slowed down and, jumping out,
lighted the lamps. In the seat again,--no words had passed,--he
threw in the high-speed clutch, and the world flung behind them,
roaring. Thereafter, breathless, stunned by the frenzy of speed,
perforce silent, they bored on through the night, crashing along
deserted highways.

In the east a band of pallid light lifted up out of the night, and
the horizon took shape against it, stark and black. Slowly,
stealthily, the formless dawn dusk spread over the sleeping world;
to the zenith the light-smitten stars reeled and died, and houses,
fields, and thoroughfares lay a-glimmer with ghostly twilight as
the car tore headlong through the grim, unlovely, silent
hinterland of Long Island City.

The gates of the ferry-house were inexorably shut against them
when at last Maitland brought the big machine to a tremulous and
panting halt, like that of an over-driven thoroughbred. And though
they perforce endured a wait of fully fifteen minutes, neither
found aught worth saying; or else the words wherewith fitly to
clothe their thoughts were denied them. The girl seemed very
weary, and sat with head drooping and hands clasped idly in her
lap. To Maitland's hesitant query as to her comfort she returned a
monosyllabic reassurance. He did not again venture to disturb her;