"Of course, only these last two or three days, ever since our last
date, I've been making myself miserable. I've been telling myself
foolish things, impossible things, and it's only now that I've thrown
off the blues. I'm happy, Dear!"
"I'm glad you are," he said. His voice was strangely husky, and he
stared fixedly at the street rushing toward them. "I'm glad you are,"
he repeated, a curious tensity in his tones.
"So'm I."
"I'll never do anything to make you unhappy, Pat--never. Not--if I can
help it."
"You can help it, Nick. You're the one making me happy; please keep
doing it."
"I--hope to." There was a queer catch in his voice. It was almost as if
he feared something.
"Selah!" said Pat conclusively. She was thinking, "Wrong of me to refer
to that accident. After all it was harmless; just a natural burst of
passion. Might happen to anyone."
"Where'll we go?" asked Nick as they swung into the tree-shadowed road
of Lincoln Park. "We haven't decided that."
"Anywhere," said the girl dreamily. "Just drive; we'll find a place."
"You must know lots of them."
"We'll find a new place; we'll discover it for ourselves. It'll mean
more, doing that, than if we just go to one of the old places where
I've been with every boy that ever dated me. You don't want me dancing
with a crowd of memories, do you?"
"I shouldn't mind as long as they stayed merely memories."
"Well, I should! This evening's to be ours--exclusively ours."
"As if it could ever be otherwise!"
"Indeed?" said Pat. "And how do you know what memories I might choose
to carry along? Are you capable of inspecting my mental baggage?"
"We'll check it at the door. You're traveling light tonight, aren't
you?"
"Pest!" she said, giving his cheek an impudent vicious pinch. "Nice,
pleasurable pest!"
He made no answer. The car was idling rather slowly along Michigan
Boulevard; half a block ahead glowed the green of a traffic light.
Faster traffic flowed around them, passing them like water eddying
about a slow floating branch.
Suddenly the car lurched forward. The amber flame of the warning light
had flared out; they flashed across the intersection a split second
before the metallic click of the red light, and a scant few feet before
the converging lines of traffic from the side street swept in with
protesting horns.
"Nick!" the girl gasped. "You'll rate yourself a traffic ticket! Why'd
you cut the light like that?"
"To lose your guardian angel," he muttered in tones so low she barely
understood his words.
Pat glanced back; the lights of a dozen cars showed beyond the barrier
of the red signal.
"Do you mean one of those cars was following us? What on earth makes
you think that, and why should it, anyway?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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