A shaded electric lamp showed up every detail of the map, but Aurora hardly looked at it once. She knew the way by heart I remember her telling me that she had passed that way many a time when going to take the waters.
She knew exactly at what point to make a detour round the towns whose red halo emerged from the darkness to right and left, grew before our eyes, was overtaken and disappeared in the night. Three or four times she muttered: Cassel, Giessen, Wetzlar!
Cassel, Giessen, Wetzlar! What did I care?
The light from the lamp lit up a clock near the speedometer. But I could not see the time. Thought had deserted me....
Without slowing down we went through a hilly town with houses hidden among dark clumps of trees.
"Wiesbaden," murmured Aurora. "My villa," she remarked as we passed one of these houses. "It's not yet one o'clock. We have come very well."
She turned to the right where the road forked. Far away on the left the lights of a big city glowed in the night sky.
"That's Mainz," she said, "and here's the Rhine."
At top speed we crossed the sacred river by a suspension bridge. A dull roar came up from below. Here and there, where the darkness was less intense, we could see its green waters.
At the far end of the bridge we thought we heard an order. A hoarse, "Who goes there!" Then, unmistakably, the sharp sound of a shot.