In the meanwhile she was more anxious than as yet. The mist seemed to have settled down more here than in the open country. There were lights in many windows in the suburbs, and the street lamps were lit. It is strange how the perspective of lines of lamps gets changed when one is riding or driving or cycling in mist or fog. If one kept the centre of the road it would be all right; but as one keeps of necessity to the left the lines between the lamps which guide the eye change with each instant. The effect is that straight lines appear to be curved; and if the driver loses nerve and trusts to appearances he will soon come to grief. This was Joy’s first experience of driving in mist, and she naturally fell into the error. She got confused as to the right and wrong side of the road. She had to fight against the habit of her life, which instinctively took command when her special intention was in abeyance. She knew that from Dumfries the road dropped to the south-east and as the curve seemed away to the left from her side of the road she, thinking that the road to the left was the direct road, naturally inclined towards the right hand, when she came to a place where there were roads to choose. There was no one about from whom to ask the way; and she feared to descend from the car to look for a sign-post. The onus of choice was on her, and she took the right hand thinking it was straight ahead. For some time now she had been going slow, and time and distance had both spun out to infinitude; she had lost sense of both. She was tired, wearied to death with chagrin and responsibility. Everything around her was new and strange and unknown, and so was full of terrors. She did not know how to choose. She feared to ask lest the doing so might land her in new embarrassments. She knew that unless she got home in something like reasonable time her father would be not only deeply upset but furiously angry--and all that anger would be visited on Him. Oh she must get on! It was too frightful to contemplate what might happen should she have to be out all night … and after having gone out with a man against whom her father had already a grievance, though he owed him so much! The change in the road, however, gave her some consolation; it was straight and smooth, and as the wind was now more in her face she felt that she was making southward. But her physical difficulties were increasing. The wind was much stronger, and the mist came boiling up so fast that her goggles got blurred more than ever. Everything around her was becoming wet. For a few miles--she could only guess at the distance--all went well, and she got back some courage. She still went slowly and carefully; she did not mean to have any mischance now if she could help it. It would not be so very long before she was over the Border. Then most likely she would be out of the mist and she could put on more speed.