She stood outside the bicycle store and kept her gaze upon the 'bus, which was growing less and less distinct to the eye as it rolled down the street, while Haslam hastily engaged a two-seated machine.
The 'bus had not yet disappeared in the darkness when the pursuers, Amy upon the front seat, glided out from the sidewalk and down over the asphalt. The passage became rough below Columbia Avenue, where the asphalt gives away to Belgian block paving. Haslam's athletic training and the acquaintance of both with the bicycle served to minimize this disadvantage.
The frequent stoppages of the 'bus made it less difficult for them to keep in close sight of it. Conversation was not easy between them. Both kept silence, therefore, their eyes fixed upon the 'bus ahead, and carefully watching its every stop.
“You're sure he hasn't gotten off yet?” she asked, at Girard Avenue.
“Certain.”
“He's probably going to his rooms down-town.”
“Or to his club.”
So they pressed southward. Before them stretched the lone vista of electric lights away down Broad Street to the City Hall invisible in the night.
The difficulty of talking made thinking more involuntary. Haslam's mind turned back three years. Was it, as he had dared sometimes to fancy, a juvenile capriciousness that had impelled this girl in front of him to reject him when she was seventeen, after having manifested an unmistakable tenderness for him? And now that she was twenty, and had in the meantime rejected several others, and broken one engagement, was it too late to attempt to revive the old spark?
His meditations were suddenly interrupted by an exclamation from the girl herself.