They let out their spirited animals as they turned up into the longer stretch of the Eastern path. The air and movement had brought a deeper pink to Cordelia's cheeks, and, as was usual in her moments of excitement, her expanded pupils made her eyes look dark.
"Isn't it glorious!" she cried abandonedly. "I think I'm going to make myself drunk, dead drunk, with this ride to-day!"
She put the whip recklessly to her distracted mare, and, shooting out ahead of Hartley, raced exultantly down the level stretch before her.
A Park attendant caught sight of her careering wildly down the path. He pushed his way through the bushes as she swept past and called after her warningly to lessen her speed. The little chestnut mare swerved at the sudden appearance and call of the man, and for a moment, as her mount bounded forward, Cordelia lost the reins.
The mare's speed did not yield one stride to her frantic pull at the bit. At a glance Hartley realized that it was a runaway.
He remembered, to his sudden horror, that Cordelia was not the best of horsewomen. But still, he felt, with the open stretch that lay before them there might be no immediate danger. The danger lay ahead, in the winding roadway, the brushwood and trees, the all too many overhead bridges.
Hartley did not hesitate when he realized what these might mean. A dozen times before that day he had shown his powerful roan to be the fleeter animal. As Cordelia's mare bolted through a hedge of bare lilac-bushes at the first turn of the path, and went dashing across the open greensward of the Park, he was racing down on her, not a hundred yards behind.
As they raced he could see that he was slowly gaining. It awoke in him his dormant passion for struggle, his delight in action, and he almost gloried in that strange chase, with a barbaric, a rudimentary gladness in his sense of mastery over the quivering beast beneath him.
He came bounding alongside when they were not more than twenty yards from a row of green-painted benches lining one of the walks.
"Shake off your stirrup!" he called to her. He was almost near enough to reach out his arm and touch her, but at first she did not understand him. She had, indeed, lost all control of herself and her horse. Before he could make her understand, the row of benches were under their noses. They had to take them together. Cordelia's mare struck the top board of a bench-back and splintered it as she went over.