Rather, she was all girl, he recognized, but of a new variety. A vision of _the nice_ girls he had known dominated his vision, flooded his mind, all smiling with veiled eyes, clothed in a thousand reserves, fluttering graces, innocent wiles, with their gaze firmly set toward the shining, desirable goal of matrimony. Eliza was not like that, it was true; but she, from the withdrawn, impersonal height of her cool perfection, was a law to herself. There was a new freedom in Annot's acceptance of life, he realized vaguely, as different as possible from mere license; no one, he was certain, would presume with Annot Hardinge: her very frankness offered infinitely less incentive to unlawful thoughts than the conscious modesty of the others. When the biologist left the piazza Annot turned with a glad gesture to her companion. “He hasn't seemed so well--not for years; his little, gay fun again... it's too good to be true. I should like to celebrate--something entirely irresponsible. I have worried, oh, dreadfully.” The night was still, moonless; the stars burned like opals in the intense purple deeps of the sky. The air, freighted with the rich fruitage of full summer, hung close and heavy. “It's hot as a blotter,” Annot declared. “I think, yes--I'm sure, I should like to go out in the car.” She rose. “Will you bring it around, please?” He drove slowly over the deserted lane by the lawn, and found her, enveloped in the lustrous folds of a black satin wrap, at the front gate. Over her hair she had tied a veil drawn about her brow in a webby filament of flowers “I think I'll sit in front,” she decided; “perhaps I'll drive.” He waited, at the steering wheel, for directions. “Go west, young man,” she told him, and would say nothing more. A distant bell thinly struck eleven jarring notes as they moved into the flickering gloom of empty streets with the orange blur of lamps floating unsteadily on dim boughs above, and the more brilliant, crackling radiance of the arc lights at the crossings. The headlights of the automobile cut like white knives through the obscurity of hedged ways; at sudden turnings they plunged into gardens, flinging sharply on the shadowy night vivid glimpses of incredible greenery, unearthly flowers, wafers of white wall. They drove for a long, silent period, with increasing momentum as the way became more open and direct; now they seemed scarcely to touch the uncertain surface below, but to be wheeling through sheer space, flashing their stabbing incandescence into the empty envelopment beyond the worlds.