In silence Sara broke the sandwiches and fed him, piece by piece, while he bent over the wheel, driving steadily onward.

The little, intimate action sent a curious thrill through her.  It seemed in some way to draw them together, effacing the memory of those weeks of bitter indifference which lay behind them.  Such a thing would have been grotesquely impossible of performance in the atmosphere of studied formality supplied by their estrangement, and Sara smiled a little to herself under cover of the darkness.

“One more mouthful!” she announced as she halved the last sandwich.

An instant later she felt his lips brush her fingers in a sudden, burning kiss, and she withdrew her hand as though stung.

She was tingling from head to foot, every nerve of her a-thrill, and for a moment she felt as though she hated him.  He had been so kind, so friendly, so essentially the good comrade in this crisis occasioned by Molly’s flight, and now he had spoilt it all—­playing the lover once more when he had shown her clearly that he meant nothing by it.

Apparently he sensed her attitude—­the quick withdrawal of spirit which had accompanied the more physical retreat.

“Forgive me!” he said, rather low.  “I won’t offend again.”

She made no answer, and presently she felt the car sliding slowly to a standstill.  A sudden panic assailed her.

“What is it?  What are you doing?” she asked, quick fear in her sharply spoken question.

He laughed shortly.

“You needn’t be afraid—­” he began.

“I’m not!” she interpolated hastily.

“Excuse me,” he said drily, “but you are.  You don’t trust me in the slightest degree.  Well”—­she could guess, rather than see, the shrug which accompanied the words—­“I can’t blame you.  It’s my own fault, I suppose.”

He braked the car, and she quivered to a dead stop, throbbing like a live thing in the darkness.

“You must forgive me for being so material,” he went on composedly, “but I want a drink, and I’m not acrobat enough to manage that, even with your help, while we’re doing thirty miles an hour.”

He lifted out the flask, and, when they had both drunk, Sara meekly took it from him and proceeded to adjust the screw cap and fit the silver cup back into its place over the lower half of the flask.

Simultaneously she felt the car begin to move forward, and then, quite how it happened she never knew, but, fumbling in the darkness, she contrived to knock the cup sharply against the flask, and it flew out of her hand and over the side of the car.  Impulsively she leaned out, trying to snatch it back as it fell, and, in the same instant, something seemed to give way, and she felt herself hurled forward into space.  The earth rushed up to meet her, a sound as of many waters roared in her ears, and then the blank darkness of unconsciousness swallowed her up.