Just once, as the car whirled through a brightly lighted square in a small village where a country festival of some sort was in progress, he saw her take advantage of a moment when everybody's attention was caught by the scene, and look suddenly and absorbedly at Kirke Waldron's face in profile. But when Ridge Jordan whirled about upon his folding seat, to call her attention to the antics of a clown in the square, she was ready for him with a smile and a gay word of assent. Julius laughed to himself. There was no question that Kirke's face, even in profile, was one to make Ridge's look insignificant. As for the man himself-- The car, rushing on through the summer night, its powerful searchlights sending ahead a long, clear lane of safety where the road was straight, but making the dark walls on either side resolve into black pockets of mystery where the curves came, approached one of those long, winding descents, followed by a second abrupt turn and a corresponding ascent, which are--or should be--the terror of motorists. All good drivers, at such places, hurling themselves through the darkness, sound warning signals, lest other cars, less cautious, be rushing toward them without sound of their coming. Jordan's chauffeur, sending his car on down the winding hill with hardly appreciable loss of speed, took this precaution, and the mellow but challenging notes of his horn were winding a long warning when the thing happened which was to happen. No accident, but the horror of one which comes so close that it all but seizes its victims, and leaves them weak and shuddering with what might have been. Another car dashed around the lower turn, apparently not hearing the warning, or determined to ignore it, that no momentum with which to climb the steep grade coming should be lost. There was an instant in which the two drivers glimpsed each other out of the gloom of the unlighted curve; then quick action upon the part of both--lightning-like swerves to avoid the danger--two great cars rocking each on the brink of disaster, then righting themselves and running on into safety, no pausing to let any look back and ponder upon the closeness of the escape. It was all over so quickly that it was like the swift passage of a hideous thought, but there had been time for every soul in the car to look death in the face. And in that moment of peril there had been individual action--instantaneous--the action which is instinctive and born of character. Julius himself had sat absolutely still beside the chauffeur, his muscles tensely bracing themselves for whatever might come. Ashworth had caught Miss Vincent, rigid with fear, into his arms. Waldron, throwing up the arm next to Dorothy to grasp her with it, felt her hand leap toward him, and with his free hand seized it in his own.