Evening star., 1938-02-13


wheel BY tree by tree and hill by hill.
and shows the village houses almost as
clearly as the faces of cards. when one
counts the pack. At forty an hour the pleasure
of motion enters the blood mildly; at fifty
there is wind even in closed car: and
seyenty-mile average whirls the roadside trees
into a confusion rout, smears the towns to
blur turns cattle into spots and streaks OF
color, and even starts the distant hills flowing
backward in majestic stream until one
seems to be travelling against the main current
of life and opinion. Harry Grant. as soon as he
cleared the sticky coils of Manhattan traffic,
set the world adrift about him at exactly this
rate until he blew rear tire when he was
taking an outside curve Harry knew how to
do his stuff in the pinches. He swung the front
wheels quickly but smoothly with the skid
and f1icked the gears from third to second.
As he did 50, metal jaws snapped on metal
bone and everything went crunch and clatter
in the entrails of the car. 1t came to halt
leaning on the lip of ditch
He looked briefly at his girl. She was white
but she kept looking straight ahead with
foolish smile like punch-drunk prizefghter
who tries to make his opponent think it is all
joke To please him, Muriel would have kept
on smiling under the knife. In book of his
boyhood's reading, he never could remember
its name, there was blind girl called Muriel
who gave the world sad sweetness and died
young. His girl was soft, like that. At golf or
tennis she might as we'll have been blind; and
now, as often was the case, she stirred in him
an odd mixture of pity and contempt.
He got out of the car The white-hot SUM-
shine ironed out an unexpected cramp in his
neck. He stretched and yawned little, then
gave his hands something to do by lifting the
hood of the engine.
"Is it serious, darling?" Muriel asked
He looked at the trernor of her smile for
moment and reached stern decision about
her, but he checked harsher words and said
briefly: Its kapoot."
''Shall get out?" asked Muriel.
'Sit STILL" said Grant.
With the summer warmth of the day pour
ing upon him, he saw the landscape relax
from sixty miles an hour to its normal dimen-
sions. The farmhouses settled down quietly
behind their trees; the cattle never lifted their
heads but swung their tails at the flies and
continued the industry OF turning green grass
into milk and beefsteak. Half mile away a
village lay as still as sleep under the sun.
Does this mean that everything is stopped
for u.s." asked Muriel
He stepped back beside her and looked
squarely into her eyes.
"You know something?" he demanded.
By the widening of her eyes he realized he
had allowed something ugly to creep into his
face and his voice That was one of the
troubles with Muiiel: she felt the touch of
words as though they were hands whose caress
set her smiling with delight, or whose brutal
impact struck her down.
"You know something?" he repeated.
Eyes, Harry" she said, all tense now with
anxiety
You'd be glad if it were all stopped" he
declared.
mo. DEAR" said the girl. family.
BE honest, said Grant.
He wished, almost as he spoke, that he had
not used that word because the truth was
never very far from the surface of this girl.
She began to consider him calmly and he
could feel in her, as he had felt before, the
working of forces over which he had no lnowl-
edge and no control.
Eyes, wish it were all stopped"
For tOday or fOrever9" he asked