"Uncle's likely to see us very soon," retorted Romeo grimly, "unless I can keep her on the road."
But Juliet was absorbed in the joy of the moment and did not hear. A cloud of dust, through which gleamed brass and red, appeared on the road ahead of them, having rounded the curve at high speed. At the same instant, Allison saw just beyond him, the screaming fantasy of colour and sound.
"Jump!" he cried to Isabel. "Jump for your life!"
She immediately obeyed him, falling in a little white heap at the roadside. He rose, headed the machine toward the ditch at the right, and jumped to the left, falling face down in the road with his hands outstretched, Before he could stir, the other machine roared heavily over him, grazing his left hand and crushing it into the deep dust.
There was almost an instant of unbelievable agony, then, mercifully, darkness and oblivion.
XV
"HOW SHE WILL COME TO ME"
The darkness swayed but did not lift. There was a strange rhythm in its movement, as though it were the sea, but there was no sound. Black shadows crept upon him, then slowly ebbed away. At times he was part of the darkness, at others, separate from it, yet lying upon it and wholly sustained by it.
At intervals, the swaying movement changed. His feet sank slowly in distinct pulsations until he stood almost upright, then his head began to sink and his feet to rise. When his head was far down and his feet almost directly above him, the motion changed again and he came back gradually to the horizontal, sinking back with one heart-beat and rising with the next—always a little higher.
How still it was! The silence of eternity was in that all compassing dark, which reached to the uttermost boundaries of space. It was hollow and empty, save for him, rising and falling, rising and falling, in a series of regular movements corresponding almost exactly to the ticking of a watch.