"I had to be! But I trust you begin to see that even your strong hand couldn't control a woman's taste. Kidnapping! As intelligent a boy as you wanting to imitate these boorish movie----" "Not a darn bit more boorish than your smart set, with its champagne and these orgies at country clubs----" "You know so much about country clubs, don't you! The worst orgy I ever saw at one was the golf champion reading the beauty department in _Boudoir_. Would you mind backing up your statements about the vices of myself and my friends----" "Oh, you. Oh, I didn't mean----" "Then why did you----" "Now you're bullying me, and you know that if the smart set isn't vicious, at least it's so snobbish that it can't see any----" "Then it's wise to be snobbish, because if it did condescend----" "I won't stand people talking about condescending----" "Would you mind not shouting so?" "Very well! I'll keep still!" Silence again, while both of them looked unhappy, and tried to remember just what they had been fighting about. They did not at first notice a small red car larruping gaily over the road beneath the ledge, though the driver was a pink-haired man in a green coat. He was almost gone before Milt choked, "It's Pinky!" "Pink! Pinky!" he bellowed. Pinky looked back but, instead of stopping, he sped up, and kept going. CHAPTER XXI THE MINE OF LOST SOULS "That couldn't have been Pinky! Why! Why, the car he had was red," cried Claire. "Sure. The idiot's got hold of some barn paint somewhere, and tried to daub it over. He's trying to make a getaway with it!" "We'll chase him. In my car." "Don't you mind?" "Of course not. I do not give up my objections to the roughing philosophy, but---- You were right about these shoes---- Oh, don't leave me behind! Want to go along!" These sentences she broke, scattered, and totally lost as she scrambled after him, down the rocks. He halted. His lips trembled. He picked her up, carried her down, hesitated a second while his face--curiously foreshortened as she looked up at it from his big arms--twisted with emotion. He set her down gently, and she climbed into the Gomez. It seemed to her that he drove rather too carefully, too slowly. He took curves and corners evenly. His face was as empty of expression, as unmelodramatic, as that of a jitney driver. Then she looked at the speedometer. He was making forty-eight miles an hour down hill and forty to thirty on upgrades. They were in sight of the fleeing Pinky in two miles. Pinky looked back; instantly was to be seen pulling his hat low, stooping over--the demon driver. Milt merely sat more erect, looked more bland and white-browed and steady. The bug fled before them on a winding shelf road. It popped up a curve, then slowed down. "He took it too fast. Poor Pink!" said Milt.