ribbon of road that rolled steadily into the headlights' glare.
She broke the interval of wordlessness. "What is it, Nick?" she
resumed almost pleadingly. "You've hinted at something now and then.
Please--you don't have to hesitate to tell me; I'm modern enough to
forgive things past, entanglements, affairs, disgraces, or anything
like that. Don't you think I should know?"
"You'd know," he said huskily, "if I could tell you."
"Then there is something, Nick!" She pressed his arm against her. "Tell
me, isn't there?"
"I don't know." There was the suggestion of a groan in his voice.
"You don't know! I can't understand."
"I can't either. Please, Pat, let's not spoil tonight; if I could tell
you, I would. Why, Pat, I love you--I'm terribly, deeply, solemnly in
love with you."
"And I with you, Nick." She gazed ahead, where the road rose over the
arch of a narrow bridge. The speeding car lifted to the rise like a
zooming plane.
And suddenly, squarely in the center of the road, another car, until
now concealed by the arch of the bridge, appeared almost upon them.
There was a heart-stopping moment when a collision seemed inevitable,
and Pat felt the arm against her tighten convulsively into a bar of
steel. She heard her own sobbing gasp, and then, somehow, they had
slipped unscathed between the other car and the rail of the bridge.
"Oh!" she gasped faintly, then with a return of breath, "That was nice,
Nick!"
Beyond the bridge, the road widened once more; she felt the car
slowing, edging toward the broad shoulder of the road.
"There was danger," said her companion in tones as emotionless as the
rasping of metal. "I came to save it."
"Save what?" queried Pat as the car slid to a halt on the turf.
"Your body." The tones were still cold, like grinding wheels. "The
beauty of your body!"
He reached a thin hand toward her, suddenly seized her skirt and
snatched it above the silken roundness of her knees. "There," he
rasped. "That is what I mean."
"Nick!" Pat half-screamed in appalled astonishment. "How--" She paused,
shocked into abrupt silence, for the face turned toward her was but a
remote, evil caricature of Nicholas Devine's. It leered at her out of
blood-shot eyes, as if behind the mask of Nick's face peered a red-eyed
demon.

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