After a long silence:
“How fast, Garry?”
“Around fifty.”
“How far is it?”
“About twenty-five miles further.”
The car rushed on through the night under the brilliant July stars and over a perfect road. In the hollows, where spring brooks ran under stone bridges, a slight, chilling mist hung, but otherwise the night was clear and warm.
Woods, fields, farms, streamed by in the darkness; 395 the car tore on in the wake of its glaring, golden headlights, where clouds of little winged creatures of the night whirled and eddied like flecks of tinsel.
Rarely they encountered other cars, for the hour was late, and there were no lights in the farm houses which they passed along the road.
They spoke seldom now, their terrific speed and the roaring wind discouraging conversation. But the night air, which they whipped into a steadily flowing gale, was still soft and fragrant and warm; and with every mile their exhilaration increased.
Now the eastern horizon, which had already paled to a leaden tone, was becoming pallid; and few stars were visible except directly overhead.