They were running at a great pace along a straight level piece of road with high banks on either side, and by the roadside at regular intervals were piles of broken granite. Christopher’s attention was fixed on a distant speck that might be a danger-signal and he did not answer her or notice the nearer signal of danger in her white face.
She was in the grip of her old wild passion again, on fire with her need of assurance, and in a gust of anger she caught at the wheel that seemed to claim his mind. The car swerved violently, jolted up on to the turf, bumped madly along at a dangerous tilt, swerved back into the road two feet clear of a grey pile of stone. Only then did Christopher know her fingers were gripped between his hands and the steel wheel. 225 He brought the car to a standstill and her released hand fell white and numb to her side. She neither spoke nor moved, but gazed before her, oblivious even of her crushed fingers.
There was a running brook the other side of the hedge and a convenient gate. He soaked his handkerchief in it, came back to her and put the numbed hand on the cool linen. His grip had been like iron and the averted disaster so near as to be hardly passed from his senses, yet he felt sick and ashamed at this almost trifling price they had to pay. He felt each bruised finger carefully and bound them up as best he could, and only then did he speak.
“I’m fearfully sorry, Patricia, I didn’t know.”
She looked vaguely at the white bound hand.
“My fingers? Oh, I’m glad. You shouldn’t have tied them up.”
He paid no heed, but having examined the car, climbed back to his place.
“We must go on,” he remarked, “so it’s no use asking you if you are too frightened, Patricia.”
“You might put me out on the roadside,” she suggested dully.
To that, too, he paid no heed and they started again.