  AT a solitary breakfast the incident of the preceding night seemed fantastic, unreal; he retained the broken, vivid memory of the scene, the thrill of vague words, that lingers disturbingly into the waking world from a dream. And, when he saw Annot later, there was no trace of a consequent informality in her manner; she was distant, hedged about by an evident concern for her father. “I have sent for Professor Jamison.” She addressed Anthony with blank eyes. “Please be within call in case—” He saw the neurologist as the latter circled the plaster cupids to the entrance of the house—a heavy man with a broad, smooth face, thinlipped like a priest, with staring yellow gloves. Anthony remained in the lower hall, but no demand for his assistance sounded from above. When the specialist descended, he flashed a glance, as bitingly swift and cold as glacial water, over Anthony, then nodded in the direction of the garden. “Miss Annot tells me that you are sleeping in the house,” he said when they were outside; “on the chance that she might need you for her father... she will. He is at the point of mental dissolution.” An involuntary repulsion possessed Anthony at the detached manner in which the other pronounced these hopeless words. “Nothing may be done; that is—it is not desirable that anything should. I am telling you this so that you can act intelligently. Rufus Hardinge knows it; there was a consultation at Geneva, which he approved. “He is,” he continued with a warmer, more personal note, “a very distinguished biologist; his investigations, his conclusions, have been invaluable.” He glanced at an incongruous, minute, jewelled watch on his wrist, and continued more quickly. “Ten years ago he should have stopped all work, vegetated—he was burning up rapidly; merely a reduced amount of labor would have accomplished little for his health or subject. And we couldn't spare his labor, no mere prolongation of life would have justified that loss of knowledge, progress. It was his position; he insisted upon it and we concurred... he chose... insanity. “Miss Annot is not aware of this; he must have every moment possible; every note is priceless. The end will come—now, at any time.” He had reached the small, canary yellow Dreux landaulet waiting for him, and stepped into it with a sharp nod. “You may expect violence,” he added, as the car gathered momentum. But that evening in the dim quietude of the piazza the biologist seemed to have recovered completely his mental poise. He spoke in a buoyant vein of the great men he had known, celebrated names in the world of the arts, in politics and science. He recalled Braisted, the astronomer, searching relaxation in the Boulevard school of French fictionists. “I told him,” he chuckled at the mild, scholastic humor, “that he had been peeping too long at Venus.” Annot was steeped in an inscrutable silence. For the first time, Anthony was actually aware of her features: she had a broad, low brow swept by the coppery hair loosely tied at the back; her eyes resembled her father's, they were amber-colored, and singularly candid in their interest in all that passed before them; while her nose tilted up slightly above a mouth frankly large. It was the face of a boy, he decided, but felt instantly that he had fallen far short of the fact—the allurement, the perfection, of her youthful maturity hung overwhelmingly about her the challenge of sex. Rather, she was all girl, he recognized, but of a new variety. A vision of the nice girls he had known dominated his vision, flooded his mind, all smiling with veiled eyes, clothed in a thousand reserves, fluttering graces, innocent wiles, with their gaze firmly set toward the shining, desirable goal of matrimony. Eliza was not like that, it was true; but she, from the withdrawn, impersonal height of her cool perfection, was a law to herself. There was a new freedom in Annot's acceptance of life, he realized vaguely, as different as possible from mere license; no one, he was certain, would presume with Annot Hardinge: her very frankness offered infinitely less incentive to unlawful thoughts than the conscious modesty of the others. When the biologist left the piazza Annot turned with a glad gesture to her companion. “He hasn't seemed so well—not for years; his little, gay fun again... it's too good to be true. I should like to celebrate—something entirely irresponsible. I have worried, oh, dreadfully.” The night was still, moonless; the stars burned like opals in the intense purple deeps of the sky. The air, freighted with the rich fruitage of full summer, hung close and heavy. “It's hot as a blotter,” Annot declared. “I think, yes—I'm sure, I should like to go out in the car.” She rose. “Will you bring it around, please?” He drove slowly over the deserted lane by the lawn, and found her, enveloped in the lustrous folds of a black satin wrap, at the front gate. Over her hair she had tied a veil drawn about her brow in a webby filament of flowers “I think I'll sit in front,” she decided; “perhaps I'll drive.” He waited, at the steering wheel, for directions. “Go west, young man,” she told him, and would say nothing more. A distant bell thinly struck eleven jarring notes as they moved into the flickering gloom of empty streets with the orange blur of lamps floating unsteadily on dim boughs above, and the more brilliant, crackling radiance of the arc lights at the crossings. The headlights of the automobile cut like white knives through the obscurity of hedged ways; at sudden turnings they plunged into gardens, flinging sharply on the shadowy night vivid glimpses of incredible greenery, unearthly flowers, wafers of white wall. They drove for a long, silent period, with increasing momentum as the way became more open and direct; now they seemed scarcely to touch the uncertain surface below, but to be wheeling through sheer space, flashing their stabbing incandescence into the empty envelopment beyond the worlds. They passed with a muffled din through the single street of a sleeping village, leaving behind a confusion of echoes and the startled barking of a dog. Anthony could see Annot's profile, pale and clear, against the flying and formless countryside; the lace about her hair fluttered ceaselessly; and her wrap bellowed and clung about her shoulders, about her gloveless hands folded upon her slim knees. She was splendidly, regally scornful upon the wings of their reckless flight; the throttle was wide open; they swung from side to side, hung on a single wheel, lunged bodily into the air. In the mad ecstasy of speed she rose; but Anthony, clutching her arms, pulled her sharply into the seat. Then, decisively, he shut off the power, the world ceased to race behind them, the smooth clamor of the engine sank to a low vibratone. “You did that wonderfully,” she told him with glowing cheeks, shining eyes; “it was marvellous. A moment like that is worth a life-time on foot... laughing at death, at everything that is safe, admirable, moral... a moment of the freedom of soulless things, savage and unaccountable to God or society.” The illuminated face of the clock before him indicated a few minutes past one, and, tentatively, he repeated the time. “How stupid of you,” she protested; “silly, little footrule of the hours, the conventional measure of the commonplace. For punishment—on and on. Like Columbus' men you are afraid of falling over the edge of—propriety.” She turned to him with solemn eyes. “I assure you there is no edge, no bump or brimstone, no place where good stops and tumbles into bad; it's all continuous—” He lost the thread of her mocking discourse, and glanced swiftly at her, his brow wrinkled, the shadow of a smile upon his lips. “Heavens! but you are good-looking,” she acknowledged, her countenance studiously critical, impersonal. After that silence once more fell upon them; the machine sang through the dark, lifting over ridges, dropping down declines. Anthony had long since lost all sense of their position. The cyanite depths of the sky turned grey, cold; there was a feeling in the air of settling dew; a dank mist filled the hollows; the color seemed suddenly to have faded from the world. He felt unaccountably weary, inexpressibly depressed; he could almost taste the vapidity of further existence. Annoys hard, bright words echoed in his brain; the flame of his unthinking idealism sank in the thin atmosphere of their logic.
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