It seemed wonderful to David to be flying along in Diana's sumptuous motor. He had never before been in a powerful noiseless Napier car, and he found it somewhat of an experience. Involuntarily he thought of the time when he had been so deadly weak from African fever, and his people had had somehow to get him to the coast; the rough little cart on wheels they made to hold him and his mattress, and tried to draw him along the apology for a road. But the shaking and bumping had been so absolutely unbearable, that he had eventually had to be slung and carried as far as the river. Even so, there had been the perpetual dread of the agonising jerk if one of his bearers stumbled over a stone, or stepped unexpectedly into a rut. And to all this he was so soon returning. And quite right, too. No man should glide through life on cushioned tyres. For a woman, it was quite otherwise. Her womanhood constituted a sufficient handicap, without any roughness or hardship being allowed to come her way. He liked to know that Diana would always—literally and metaphorically—glide through life in a noiseless Napier. This method of progression need be no hindrance to her following of the star.

He looked at his watch. In ten minutes they would reach Riverscourt.

He switched off the lights, and at once the flying trees and hedges became visible in the pale moonlight. He enjoyed watching them as they whirled past. The great car bounded silently along the road, sounding a warning note upon the horn, if the distant light of any cart or carriage came in sight ahead of them; but passing it, and speeding on in the snowy darkness, before David had had time to look out and see what manner of vehicle it was.