like to take a ride in the car--out into the
country, you know? Then you could tell me, and nobody would hear or
interrupt."

She was startled by the similarity of his arrangement to that of Nicky
Easton, but she approached it with different dread.

She regretted the broad daylight and the disconcerting landscape. In
the ride with Nicky she had been enveloped in the dark. Now the sky
was lined with unbleached wool. The air was thick with snow withheld,
and the snow on the ground took the color of the sky. But the light
was searching, cynical, and the wayside scenes were revealed with the
despondent starkness of a Russian novel. In this romanceless,
colorless dreariness it was not easy for Mamise to gloss over the
details of her meeting with Nicky Easton.

There was no escaping this part of the explanation, however, and she
could see how little comfort Davidge took from the news that she had
gone so far to be alone with a former devotee. A man does not want his
sweetheart to take risks for him beyond a certain point, and he would
rather not be saved at all than be saved by her at too high a price.
The modern man has a hard time living down the heritage from the
ten-thousand-year habitude of treating his women like children who
cannot be trusted to take care of themselves.

Mamise had such poor success with the part of her chronicle she wished
to publish that she boggled miserably the part she wanted to handle
with most discretion. As is usual in such cases, the most conspicuous
thing about her message was her inability to conceal the fact that she
was concealing something. Davidge's imagination was consequently so
busy that he paid hardly any attention to the tremendous facts she so
awkwardly delivered.

She might as well have told him flat that Nicky would not divulge his
plot except with his arms about her and his lips at her cheeks. That
would not have been easy telling, but it was all too easy imagining
for Davidge. He was thrown into an utter wretchedness by the vision he
had of her surrender to the opportunity and to the undoubted
importunity of her companion. He had a morbid desire to make her
confess, and confessors have a notorious appetite for details.

"You weren't riding with Easton alone in the dark all that
time--without--"

She waited for the question as for a bludgeon. Davidge had some
trouble in wielding it. He hated the thought so much that the words
were unspeakable, and he hunted for some par