ntil she could
tap his cheek with her second finger. "Is this all the entertainment
you can think of to-night?" she bantered.

He glanced at his watch. "It's late for a theatre," he said, "but we
can ride. Which do you say--auto or horse-back?"

"I can't go horse-back in these clothes, and I don't want to change."

Dave pressed a button, and the omnipresent Chinese "boy" stood before
him. "My car," he said. "The two-passenger car. I shall not want a
driver." Then, continuing to Miss Morrison, "You will need something
more than that coat. Let me see. My smoking jacket should fit."

In a few minutes they were threading their way through the street
traffic in Dave's machine. Whatever had been his forecast of impending
disaster, the streets held little hint of it. They were congested with
traffic and building material. Although it was late at night the
imperious clamour of electric rivetters rattled down from steel
structures on every hand. Office blocks, with their rental space all
contracted months in advance, were being rushed to completion by the
aid of arc lights and double shifts. But presently the traffic
thinned, and the car hummed through long residential avenues of
comfortable homes. From a thousand unmasked windows came the glow of
light; here and there were the strains of music. On and on they sped,
until the city streets and the city lights fell behind, and the car was
swinging along a fine country road, through a land marked with streams
and bridges, and blocked out with fragrant bluffs of young poplars.

At last, after an hour's steady driving in a delight of motion too keen
for conversation, they pulled up on the brow of a hill. A soft breeze
from the south-west, sensuous with the smell of spruce and
balm-o'-gilead, pressed, cool and gentle, against their faces, and far
to the south-east some settler's burning straw pile lay like an
orange-red coal on the lips of the prairie, from which she blew an
incense of ruddy gold and ochre, fan-shaped against the heavens.
Behind them, to the north, far-away city lights danced and sparkled in
the lap of the foot-hills, like diamonds strewn by some mighty and
profligate Croesus. Dave switched off his lights, the better to
appreciate the majesty of the night, and in the silence came the low
murmur of water. There were no words. They sat and breathed it.

Suddenly, from a sharp bend in the road, flashed the lights of an
approaching car. Dave was