"That's the idea! Bring on the booze, let joy be unrefined! Waiter, rye high-balls all around!"
She did not object; that did not seem worth while, either. When the glasses came she emptied hers with the rest, and her spirits did seem to lighten a little. "It removes inhibitions," Gilbert Kennedy had said. And he was gone, too. If he were only there the sparkle of life would come back; she would be exhilarated, witty, alive to her finger-tips once more—
The crowd was moving on again. She went with them into the cool night, and it seemed to her that life was nothing but a moving on from dissatisfaction to dissatisfaction. Squeezed into a corner of the tonneau, she relapsed into silence, and it was some time before she noticed the altered note in the excitement of the others.
"Give 'er the gas! Let 'er out! Damn it, if you let 'em pass—!" the car's owner was shouting, and the machine fled like a runaway thing. Against a blur of racing sand dunes Helen saw a long gray car creeping up beside them. "You're going to kill us!" momma screamed, disregarded. Helen, on her feet, clinging to the back of the front seat, yelled with the others. "Beat 'im! Beat 'im! Y-a-a-ah!"
Her hat, torn from her head, disappeared in the roaring blur behind them. Her hair whipped her face. She was wildly, gloriously alive. "Faster—faster, oh!" The gray car was gaining. Inch by inch it crawled up beside them. "Can't you go faster?" she cried in a bedlam of shouts. Oh, if only her hands were on the wheel! It was unbearable that they should lose. "Give 'er more gas—she'll make eighty-five!" the owner yelled.
Everything in Helen narrowed to the challenge of that plunging gray car. Its passing was like an intolerable pulling of something vital from her grip. Pounding her hand against the car-door she shrieked frantic protests. "Don't let him do it! Go on! Go on!" The gray car was forging inexorably past them. It swerved. Momma's scream was torn to ribbons by the wind. It was ahead now, and one derisive yell from its driver came back to them. Their speed slowed.
"He's turning in at The Tides. Stop there?" the chauffeur asked over his shoulder.
"Yes, damn you! Wha'd yuh think you're driving, a baby-carriage? You're fired!" his employer raged, and he was still swearing when Helen, gasping and furious, stumbled from the running-board against Gilbert Kennedy.
"Good Lord, was it you?" he cried. "Some race!" he exulted and swinging her off her feet, he kissed her gayly. Something wild and elemental in her rushed to meet its mate in him. He released her instantly, and in a chorus of greetings, "Drinks on me, old man!" "Some little car you've got!" "Come on in!" she found herself under a glare of light in the swirl and glitter of The Tides. He was beside her at the round table, and her heart was pounding.
"No—no—this is on me!" he declared. "Only my money's good to-night. I'm going to Argentine to-morrow on the water-wagon. What'll you have?"