The glove convulsed, like a small excited or irritated animal. Marcueil would not have been very surprised to hear it bark. At the bottom of the steps, with feverish fingers, Ellen broke the stem of a red rose.

Marcueil, still serious, interpreted this gesture:

“So you’re fond of flowers?”

He affected to believe that it was a mere caprice, and to excuse himself for not having anticipated it. The roses of Lurance would have justified it; they were of immemorial fame, with several unique varieties among them. Marcueil opened a pocketknife and went over to the flower bed.

Miss Elson refused with a movement of her head.

“It’s not worth it. I’m leaving tomorrow. It’s true I should have liked their scent and color to brighten up the long track and the smoky cars for me, but they would die.”

With a readiness that shocked her, Marcueil put away his knife.

“I forgot, the big race. Yes. . . they mustn’t die. . .”

Ellen, not wanting to admit that she found Marcueil’s manner a trifle too brutally discourteous, abruptly got back into her car, which snorted.

Bereft of ornaments and comforts, under a simple coat of red-lead paint, the machine exhibited without modesty, almost with pride, its organs of propulsion. It seemed like a lewd and fabulous god carrying off the girl. But, with a sort of crown, she turned the head of the docile monster wherever she willed, to left and to right. The dragons of legend are all crowned.

The metallic beast, like a huge beetle, fluttered its wing-sheaths, scratched the ground, trembled, agitated its feelers, and departed.

Ellen, in her pale-green dress, seemed like a tiny alga clinging to a gigantic coral trunk being carried away by a rushing torrent. . .

Marcueil, deep in thought, listened to the diminishing hum of the motor. The memory of it sounded in his ears long after the actual sound had disappeared.

“They mustn’t die,” he thought.

Then, as though awakening from sleep, he called the gardener and ordered him to cut all the roses.

The Ten-Thousand-Mile Race

THE TEN-THOUSAND-MILE RACE

William Elson was over forty when his daughter Ellen was born. In the year 1920 he was more than a sexagenarian, but the suppleness of his tall frame, the vigor of his health, and the lucidity of his mind belied the years and the whiteness of his beard.

He had won fame by his toxicological discoveries, and had been appointed president of all the new temperance societies in the United States from the day when, by an anticipated reversal of scientific fashion, it was proclaimed that the only hygienic beverage was pure alcohol.

It is to William Elson that we owe the philanthropic invention of denaturing the water piped into homes so as to render it undrinkable, while leaving it fit for toilet purposes.