"I find it damnably dangerous."
"And I find it, danger and all, divine."
But Lanyard drove in an obsession of fatality . . . The road, a river of oxidized silver threading an upland world of purples and blacks in blended masses and ever and again opening up vistas of long valleys filled with mist like streams of milk, was a gauntlet of deadly perils. In the blue bowl of the sky it bleached the misshapen moon like a grinning devil-mask swung from side to side of the devious way. The vast stillness that dwelt upon the world beneath had a brooding effect as of beauty holding its breath in dread. Through that somehow abnormal hush the swaying bulk of the brougham bored like something wild of eye and mad with fear. The wind its flight created had an insane whine, and the incessant drum of its exhaust, echoing from hard smooth surfaces, was re-echoed by hills and woods and fields with a rumour as of tom-toms thrumming a bacchanal of death . . .
But to the woman who loved Lanyard it was all divine . . .
Summing up another survey of the road behind, she declared: "There is nothing. You have outwitted and distanced them."
"Have I?"
"Is there more to fear?"
"But everything."
"Even an open road?"
"Who can say what may lie in wait for us round the next bend?"