he old bike was a foam-flecked
steed. Wasn't it now?"

"Yes, but not in the dark."

Mysterious manoeuvring! But he felt he was approaching the edge. "In the
dark?"

"Yes, not in the dark. What I mean is, I really cannot imagine why you
must keep up your riding all through the winter. It was different when
there was no other way. Now the railway is running I simply cannot
imagine why you don't use it."

"Well, that's easy--because I like the ride."

"You can't possibly like riding back on these pitch dark nights, cold
and often wet. That's absurd."

"Well, I like it a jolly sight better than fugging up in those carriages
with all that gassing crowd of Garden Home fussers."

And immediately, _whizz!_ he went over the edge.

"That's just it!" Mabel said. And he thought, "Ah!"

"That's just it. And of course you laugh. Why you can't be friendly with
people like other men, I never can imagine. There're heaps of the nicest
people up at the Garden Home, but from the first you've set yourself
against them. Why you never like to make friends like other people!"

He did not answer.

They were at dinner. She made an elaborate business of reaching for the
salt. "If you ask me, it's because you don't think they're good enough
for you."

He thought, "That's to rouse me. I'm dashed if I'm going to be roused."
He thought, "It's getting the devil, this. There's never a subject we
start but we work up to something like this. We work on one another like
acid on acid. In a minute she'll have another go at it, and then I shall
fly off, and then there we'll be. It's my fault. She doesn't think out
these things like I do. She just says what comes into her head, whereas
I know perfectly well where we're driving to, so I'm really responsible.
I rile her. I either rile her by saying something in trying not to fly
off, or else I let myself go, and off I fly, and we're at it. Acid on
acid. It's getting the devil, this. But I'm dashed if I'll fly off. It's
up to me."

He tried in his mind for some matter that would change the subject.
Extraordinary how hard it was to find a new topic when some other
infernal thing hung in the air. It was like, in a nightmare, trying with
leaden limbs to crawl away from danger.

And then she began:

She resumed precisely at the point where she had left off. While his
mind had journeyed in review all around and about the relations between
them, her mind had remained cumbrously at the thought of he