On the Fourth of July she drove with Cantor to the Bloomfield Hills Country Club, adjacent to the beautiful little lakes of Oakland County, distant some twenty-odd miles from Detroit. There they lunched and dined and played golf. In the evening there were to be dancing and fireworks, but a sudden mood seized Hildegarde, before the evening's entertainment was well begun, to go home. She could not account for it herself. Simply she wanted to go home, and wanting to go, she insisted upon being taken. Cantor discovered that there was no arguing with her. They drove along the country road to Woodward Avenue, and through Birmingham, rapidly spreading Royal Oak, Highland Park, that had grown from a distant country village to a considerable city perched upon Detroit's very shoulder--on down the broad avenue which had, but a few years before, known neither pavement nor street-car. Through miles upon miles of the most convincing evidences of the city's miraculous growth they drove--and for the most part in silence. Endless rows of fine residences where, as a little girl, she had seen meadows and wheat-fields, did not now interest her.... She wanted to be alone, alone in the dark. She wanted to crouch in her room and to endeavor to compel her brain to cease from thinking. As they approached the Boulevard she became conscious of a tremendous glow in the sky toward the west, a glow that seemed to rise, to pulsate, to bound and leap fitfully. Cantor saw it, too, and slackened speed. His lips were drawn; every now and then he moistened them with his tongue, and his eyes glowed with repressed excitement. "It's a fire," said Hildegarde, with interest awakened. There was something about a big fire that fitted into her mood. "Let's drive across the Boulevard and see." "We'll only get into a mob," he protested. "Never mind. We'll take that chance." "But, Miss von Essen, we may get shut off there and held up for hours." "You needn't worry, if I don't," she said, sharply. Cantor appeared more unwilling to obey her than a mere fear of delay could easily account for. One might have said that the region of the fire was one he very obviously wished to avoid, but he obeyed, nevertheless. As they drew nearer and were able to guess at the locality of the fire Hildegarde said under her breath: "The Waite Motor Company--it is about there. Can that be it?" "I don't imagine so," Cantor said, tensely; "their buildings are fire-proof, I've heard." "But it is," Hildegarde insisted. "I'm sure it is. Hurry! It will be a tremendous fire. I want to see it." They turned and turned again. Before them lay the great mass of the Waite Motor Company's plant, silhouetted against an eye-blasting inferno of roaring flame. The fire seemed to be not in the motor-plant, but to the rear of it.... They turned, made their way through crowds of people, avoided reinforcements of fire apparatus, and arrived at a point where the conflagration lay before them.