"You'd know," he said huskily, "if I could tell you."
"Then there is something, Nick!" She pressed his arm against her. "Tell me, isn't there?"
"I don't know." There was the suggestion of a groan in his voice.
"You don't know! I can't understand."
"I can't either. Please, Pat, let's not spoil tonight; if I could tell you, I would. Why, Pat, I love you—I'm terribly, deeply, solemnly in love with you."
"And I with you, Nick." She gazed ahead, where the road rose over the arch of a narrow bridge. The speeding car lifted to the rise like a zooming plane.
And suddenly, squarely in the center of the road, another car, until now concealed by the arch of the bridge, appeared almost upon them. There was a heart-stopping moment when a collision seemed inevitable, and Pat felt the arm against her tighten convulsively into a bar of steel. She heard her own sobbing gasp, and then, somehow, they had slipped unscathed between the other car and the rail of the bridge.
"Oh!" she gasped faintly, then with a return of breath, "That was nice, Nick!"
Beyond the bridge, the road widened once more; she felt the car slowing, edging toward the broad shoulder of the road.
"There was danger," said her companion in tones as emotionless as the rasping of metal. "I came to save it."