The girl listened as though in a nightmare, the suspicions that had been slowly gathering in her brain throughout the evening now focusing upon him from every incident with a persistence that was not to be denied. The shape sat between them again, more tangible, more cold and cruel than before. All his excuses, all his explanations gave it substance and reality. The phantom of their dead hopes it had been before--now it was something more sinister--something that put all thoughts of the Cyril she knew from her mind--the shade of Judas fawning for his pieces of silver--a pale Judas in a monocle.... She closed her eyes again and tried to think. Cyril! It was unbelievable.... And a moment ago he had kissed her. She felt again the touch of his lips on her forehead.... It seemed as though she too were being betrayed. “You ask something very difficult of me,” she stammered chokingly. “I can only ask,” he said, “and only hope that you’ll take my word for its importance.” She shivered in her corner. The sound of his voice was so impersonal, so different from the easy bantering tone to which she was accustomed, that it seemed that what he had said was true--that she did not know him. Another surprise awaited her, for he leaned forward, peering into the mirror beside the wind shield in front of Stryker and turned and looked quickly out of the rear window of the car. Then she heard his voice in quick peremptory notes through the speaking-tube. “There’s a car behind us. Lose it.” The driver touched his cap and she felt the machine leap forward. The thin stream of light far in front of them played on the gray road and danced on the dim façades of unlighted houses which emerged from the obscurity, slid by and were lost again as the car twisted and turned, rocking from side to side, moving ever more rapidly toward the open country to the north. The dark corners of cross streets menaced for a moment and were gone. A reflector gleamed from one, but they went by it without slowing, the signal shrieking. A flash full upon them, a sound of voices cursing in the darkness and the danger was passed! At the end of a long piece of straight road Cyril turned again and reached for the speaking-tube. But his voice was quite cool. “They’re coming on. Faster, Stryker.” And faster they went. They had reached the region of semi-detached villas and the going was good. The road was a narrow ribbon of light reeling in upon its spool with frightful rapidity. The machine was a fine one and its usual well-ordered purr had grown into a roar which seemed to threaten immediate disruption.