he machine,
that responded like a live thing to his touch. On the wide, straight
stretches it went at a mad pace that took her breath, and again, in
turning a corner or passing another car, it slowed down, purring in meek
obedience. Once she gasped: "Not so fast! I can't stand it."

He laughed and obeyed her. They glided between river and sky across the
delicate fabric of a bridge which but a moment before she had seen in
the distance. Running through the little village on the farther bank,
they left the river.

"Where are you going?" she asked.

"Oh, for a little spin," he answered indulgently, turning into a side
road that wound through the woods and suddenly stopping. "Janet, we've
got this day--this whole day to ourselves." He seized and drew her
to him, and she yielded dizzily, repaying the passion of his kiss,
forgetful of past and future while he held her, whispering brokenly
endearing phrases.

"You'll ruin my roses," she protested breathlessly, at last, when it
seemed that she could no longer bear this embrace, nor the pressure of
his lips. "There! you see you're crushing them!" She undid them, and
buttoning the coat, held them to her face. Their odour made her faint:
her eyes were clouded.

"Listen, Claude!" she said at last,--it was the first time she had
called him so--getting free. "You must be sensible! some one might come
along."

"I'll never get enough of you!" he said. "I can't believe it yet." And
added irrelevantly: "Pin the roses outside."

She shook her head. Something in her protested against this too public
advertisement of their love.

"I'd rather hold them," she answered. "Let's go on." He started the car
again. "Listen, I want to talk to you, seriously. I've been thinking."

"Don't I know you've been thinking!" he told her exuberantly. "If I
could only find out what's always going on in that little head of yours!
If you keep on thinking you'll dry up, like a New England school-marm.
And now do you know what you are? One of those dusky red roses just
ready to bloom. Some day I'll buy enough to smother you in 'em."

"Listen!" she repeated, making a great effort to calm herself, to regain
something of that frame of mind in which their love had assumed the
proportions of folly and madness, to summon up the scruples which,
before she had left home that morning, she had resolved to lay before
him, which she knew would return when she could be alone again. "I have
to think--you won't," sh