All at once an idea, wild and illogical enough, jumped up in her mind. Couldn't this miserable vehicle that was lumbering like a disabled bug move faster and rattle her on out of reach of the glare, the publicity, the threat of discovery, and, above all, of her discomforting notion? She breathed out relief as the carriage dipped into the comparative quiet again, and she felt herself being driven on and up a gently rising street between block-apart, lone gas-lamps. She thrust her face as far out of the window as she dared, looking back at the lights and traffic which were drifting behind her. At this distance she could single out no one figure from the crowd, and no figure which could possibly be that of the blue-eyed Chinaman was moving up the street behind her. There only remained a disquieting memory of him on the corner with Harry. Together they made a combination, to her mind, threatening to the man she loved, for whom she so desperately feared. If ever she had felt herself helpless, it was in this moment passing along the half-lit, half-empty city street. By what she knew, by what she wore around her neck, she was separated from all peace-abiding citizens--she was outlawed. Every closed door and shaded window (so many she had opened or looked out of!) now seemed shut and shaded against her for ever. Night and the reticent gray city, averting their eyes, let her slip through unregarded. She was passing that section of large, old-fashioned mansions, cupolaed, towered, indistinct at the top of their high, broad steps, or back among the trees of their gardens. Along the front of one stretched a high hedge of laurestinas black as a ribbon of the night, capacious of shadows; and it seemed to Flora that all at once a shadow detached itself. She looked with a start. It flashed along the pavement--if shadow it were--running head down with a strange, scattering movement of arms and legs, yet seeming to make such speed that for a moment it kept abreast of the cab. She could see no features, no lineament of this strange thing to recognize, yet instantly she knew what it must be--what she had feared and thought impossible. She thrust her head far out and addressed the driver. "Go as fast as you can, faster! and I'll give you twice what he gave you." The words rang so wildly to her own ears that she half expected the driver to peer down like an old bird of prey from his perch and demand her reason. But he made no sound or sign. It may have been that in his time he had heard even wilder requests than hers. He only sent his whip cracking forward to the ears of the lean horse, and the cab began to rattle like a mad thing.