“Good-bye, you old maniac: you'll be the death of me. I'll take care of the star boarder, however, and feed him champagne and mushrooms.”
With a roar, Shirley started the engines, as he bounced into the seat, and they sped down the curving driveway, with Helene leaning forward, unobserved.
“There, we've had a little by-play that friend Jim didn't guess. I always enjoy a little intrigue,” he laughed, as they whizzed along toward distant New York. “But, I had to lie, and lie, and lie—like the light that lies in women's eyes. What a jolly game!”
He was a big boy, happy in the excitement, and bubbling with his superabundance of vitality. Helene felt curiously drawn toward him, in this mood: she remembered a little paragraph she had read in a book that day:
“A woman loves a man for the boy spirit that she discovers in him: she loves him out of pity when it dies!” Then she fearsomely changed the current of her thoughts, to complain pathetically of the cold wind!
“There, now, I am so thoughtless,” was his apology, as he stopped the car, to wrap the overcoat more closely about her, and tuck her comfortably in a big fur. Through the darkened streets of the suburb they raced, entering the silent factory districts, which presaged the nearness of the river. It was well on toward daybreak before they rolled over the Queensboro Bridge to Manhattan. It was his second day without sleep, but Shirley was sustained by the bizarre nature of the exploit: he could have kept at the steering wheel for an eternity.
“Are you glad we're getting back?” he asked. Helene shook her head, then she answered dreamily.
“Do you remember something from one of Browning's poems, that I do? It's just silly for us, but I understand it better now.”
Shirley surprised her by quoting it, as he looked ahead into the dark street through which they swung, his unswerving hand steady on the wheel:
“What if we still ride on, we two,
With life forever old yet new,
Changed not in kind, but in degree,
The instant made eternity,—
And heaven just prove that I and she
Ride, ride together, forever ride?”