"My knowledge?" she repeated, with an obviously sincere surprise, "my knowledge? What do you mean? Why should I take it? I never handled a car in my life!" Antony's fingers stiffened and grew damp against the wheel. For a few sick seconds he sat utterly silent, stunned and incredulous, not knowing what he did, while his hands, with a strange muscular memory all their own of the days when he had propelled a little mechanical velocipede steered by a wheel, kept the whirring vehicle in the centre of the long, empty road. "Good heavens!" he muttered at last, "I thought you told me--you certainly said--I understood you--oh, the devil!" "Put your foot on something!" Nette cried feverishly; "that's the way they do! It can't be hard to stop it for just a moment. Put your foot----" With that she stamped her little white shoe on a round metal disc projecting like a toadstool from the floor in front of her, and immediately, whether from that cause alone, or because Antony unwittingly complicated the manoeuvre by some untoward pressure of knee or wrist, the car, with a tremendous jerk, began to revolve backward upon itself in a dizzy swoop. A moment more had seen them in the deep ditch beside the road, had not Antony dislodged her foot with an ungraceful but timely kick and allowed the mechanism to right itself and lumber into its course again. "For God's sake, sit still!" he shouted hoarsely. "Is it possible you do not understand you are in danger? Do you wish to kill or maim us both before it is necessary? I order you to sit perfectly quiet until I tell you to jump!" "Very well," she replied meekly, with a short, frightened intake of the breath, and they sped along. THE FLIGHT II. THE FLIGHT ANTONY had now--so wonderfully resilient is youth--won sufficient confidence in himself to realise that there was yet a chance of bringing this dangerous expedition to some sort of successful issue, if fate should prosper them with a straight and empty road. They were not, fortunately, travelling at any tremendous rate of speed; though jumping from the car would have been extremely unwise, it remained a possibility, at least, and if, as was fairly probable, the car had already travelled a considerable distance, its motive power would become exhausted sooner or later and they could dismount safely. In a few curt sentences he explained the situation, as it appeared to him, to his companion. "I must beg you to believe," he concluded, "that I somehow got a distinct impression of your telling me that you were used to managing these things--I cannot understand how I could have made such a mistake. I am particular in repeating this, because in case of accident--and it would be the merest idiocy to deny that a very grave accident is quite likely to happen at any moment--I do not want you to think too hardly of me. But of course your realise that unless I had been quite certain of your ability I should never have attempted such a foolhardy thing."