But though his words were stiff, his heart had grown insensibly supple under the pressure of her voice. After all, what did her condition prove--that condition that had prompted their mad flight-- but her very innocence and ignorance of alcoholic stimulant? A 65 very good showing, in these relaxed and indecorous days. We should always try to be just.
Drifting on these conflicting tides of feeling, Antony ceased to study the winding road with the severe scrutiny he had hitherto applied to it, and as the way was now very rough, he failed utterly to observe for what it was, a certain grassy cart track curving into their path, and took it with a twist of the wheel, even as his companion cried out in alarm.
"What are you doing? This cannot be right!" she warned, but it was too late, and Antony realized that on the very verge of the 66 wood road, just as he should have looked for a space to turn in and retrace their safe course, he had left that course entirely and was steering along a now barely perceptible wheelway through a rough and rolling pasture lot.
He shut his lips tightly and affected not to have heard her, and for a few seconds they rode, in silence, through the stony field. Suddenly she grasped his arm and for the first time terror sharpened her voice.
"Oh! oh! see those cows! Oh, don't you see them? Go back! Go back!"
Antony shook her off impatiently and grazed a stump on the right only to bump against a jagged boulder on the left. The car was undoubtedly moving more slowly; he could swear to it.
"I believe it is an established fact that the cow is not carnivorous," he observed, peering in spirit to the limits of the field and wondering if he could turn in case a stone wall threatened.
"I am going to jump," she announced quietly, and a spasm of fear shot through him remembering the pointed stubble and the flinty rocks.
67 "Listen," he commanded, "and try not to be a little idiot. What harm can a cow do you? Or if it could"--with a burst of inspiration--"why should you throw yourself into the middle of them--perhaps with a broken leg?"