She rubbed her left forefinger, in its knitted glove, on the seat between them; she hesitated; and said, a little doubtfully, ‘Yes, I . . .’ Then, strongly, almost gaily, ‘YES!’

From Sachem to Boston the distance was two hundred and forty-two miles, and they drove it in seven hours and forty minutes, with Hazel cautiously deputing at the wheel for seventy miles of the way, while Fred leaned his cheek on his fist and tried to sleep.

They seemed to be slipping through no living world at all, but through unending cemetery aisles lined with pale tombstones. The car fled smooth and effortless as the passage of a ghost. Between the tombs, now and then, were lights that might have been villages, but they passed so quickly that Fred could not be certain that he had seen them. Only when a bridge bumbled quickly under the car, or they heard the swishing that marked their rush through a narrow defile between hills, was he sure that he had not really died, but was actually going forward to more life.

Then around and in front of them was Albany, a cauldron that bewildered and frightened them, and they stopped hastily, climbed stiffly out, to demand coffee and to gulp its scorching bitterness. Again they drank coffee in a sleeping Pittsfield, and he thought of Stonefield near by, of William Tyler Longwhale, and the happy evening carelessness in which, decades and decades ago, Hazel and he had lounged on the porch there and tried to sing ‘Seeing Nellie Home’.

He tried to hum it now, as they creaked on, flipped around a corner and shot straight ahead, but it died on the dead air inside the car.

Hazel was intimidatingly silent and withdrawn beside him. But once, beyond Stonefield, she fondly touched his arm, and he was moved to crow, ‘The golden road to Samarkand — we’re on the way — the golden road!’

He was certain, presently, that she had gone to sleep, and he could drive as fast as he wanted. It lulled his nostalgia to watch the needle of the illuminated speedometer, only spot of light in the gloomy car, flicker up to fifty-five, sixty, sixty-five. Hills arose before him, as dark mounds beyond the headlights, and he flung the car at them with joyful viciousness. Flats spread beside them; he imagined that — in snowy December — he could hear frog choruses, and he pushed the wheels into eating up the level road. Village lights came up at him and he scorched by them, ever faster, so that they slipped past like clusters of fireflies.

He felt sleepiness parching his eyes and, as a veteran driver, stopped by the road, let Hazel jolt awake in the motion of stopped motion, turned the wheel over to her and tried to doze off.

He startled as he remembered that on his desk at home he had left a marked list of sailings from Boston.

Would it lead Howard or Sara to him? Would their complaints, their drugging appeals to his sense of duty, paralyse him again and at the last moment prevent his going?