out the two bicycles, sir, and went off, sir--about twenty
minutes ago."

Bechamel stood with his eyes round and his knuckle on his hips.
Stephen, watching him with immenseenjoyment, speculated whether

this abandoned husband would weep or curse, or rush off at once
in furiouspursuit. But as yet he seemed merely stunned.

"Brown clothes?" he said. "And fairish?"
"A little like yourself, sir--in the dark. The ostler, sir, Jim

Duke--"
Bechamel laughed awry. Then, with infinite fervour, he said--But

let us put in blank cartridge--he said, "--- ---!"
"I might have thought!"

He flung himself into the armchair.
"Damn her," said Bechamel, for all the world like a common man.

"I'll chuck this infernal business! They've gone, eigh?"
"Yessir."

Well, let 'em GO," said Bechamel, making a memorablesaying. "Let
'em GO. Who cares? And I wish him luck. And bring me some Bourbon

as fast as you can, there's a good chap. I'll take that, and then
I'll have another look round Bognor before I turn in."

Stephen was too surprised to say anything but "Bourbon, sir?"
"Go on," said Bechamel. "Damn you!"

Stephen's sympathies changed at once. "Yessir," he murmured,
fumbling for the door handle, and left the room, marvelling.

Bechamel, having in this way satisfied his sense of appearances,
and comported himself as a Pagan should, so soon as the waiter's

footsteps had passed, vented the cream of his feelings in a
stream of blasphemous indecency. Whether his wife or HER

stepmother had sent the detective, SHE had evidently gone off
with him, and that little business was over. And he was here,

stranded and sold, an ass, and as it were, the son of many
generations of asses. And his only ray of hope was that it seemed

more probable, after all, that the girl had escaped through her
stepmother. In which case the business might be hushed up yet,

and the evil hour of explanation with his wife indefinitely
postponed. Then abruptly" target="_blank" title="ad.突然地；粗鲁地">abruptly the image of that lithe figure in grey

knickerbockers went frisking across his mind again, and he
reverted to his blasphemies. He started up in a gusty frenzy with

a vague idea of pursuit, and incontinently sat down again with a
concussion that stirred the bar below to its depths. He banged

the arms of the chair with his fist, and swore again. "Of all the
accursed fools that were ever spawned," he was chanting, "I,

Bechamel--" when with an abrupt tap and promptopening of the
door, Stephen entered with the Bourbon.

THE MOONLIGHT RIDE
XXIV

And so the twenty minutes' law passed into an infinity. We leave
the wicked Bechamel clothing himself with cursing as with a

garment,--the wretched creature has already sufficiently sullied
our modest but truthful pages,--we leave the eager little group

in the bar of the Vicuna Hotel, we leave all Bognor as we have
left all Chichester and Midhurst and Haslemere and Guildford and

Ripley and Putney, and follow this dear fool of a Hoopdriver of
ours and his Young Lady in Grey out upon the moonlight road. How

they rode! How their hearts beat together and their breath came
fast, and how every shadow was anticipation and every noise

pursuit! For all that flight Mr. Hoopdriver was in the world of
Romance. Had a policeman intervened because their lamps were not

lit, Hoopdriver had cut him down and ridden on, after the fashion
of a hero born. Had Bechamel arisen in the way with rapiers for a

duel, Hoopdriver had fought as one to whom Agincourt was a
reality and drapery a dream. It was Rescue, Elopement, Glory! And

she by the side of him! He had seen her face in shadow, with the
morning sunlight tangled in her hair, he had seen her sympathetic

with that warm light in her face, he had seen her troubled and
her eyes bright with tears. But what light is there lighting a

face like hers, to compare with the soft glamour of the midsummer
moon?

The road turned northward, going round through the outskirts of
Bognor, in one place dark and heavy under a thick growth of

trees, then amidst villas again, some warm and lamplit, some
white and sleeping in the moonlight; then between hedges, over

which they saw broad wan meadows shrouded in a low-lying mist.
They scarcely heeded whither they rode at first, being only

anxious to get away, turning once westward when the spire of
Chichester cathedral rose suddenly near them out of the dewy

night, pale and intricate and high. They rode, speaking little,
just a rare word now and then, at a turning, at a footfall, at a

roughness in the road.
She seemed to be too intent upon escape to give much thought to

him, but after the first tumult of the adventure, as flight
passed into mere steady ridin@@ his mind became an enormous

appreciation of the position. The night was a warm white silence
save for the subtile running of their chains. He looked sideways

at her as she sat beside him with her ankles gracefully ruling
the treadles. Now the road turned westward, and she was a dark

grey outline against the shimmer of the moon; and now they faced
northwards, and the soft cold light passed caressingly over her

hair and touched her brow and cheek.
There is a magic quality in moonshine; it touches all that is

sweet and beautiful, and the rest of the night is hidden. It has
created the fairies, whom the sunlight kills, and fairyland rises

again in our hearts at the sight of it, the voices of the filmy
route, and their faint, soul-piercing melodies. By the moonlight

every man, dull clod though he be by day, tastes something of
Endymion, takes something of the youth and strength of Enidymion,

and sees the dear white goddess shining at him from his Lady's
eyes. The firm substantialdaylight things become ghostly and

elusive, the hills beyond are a sea of unsubstantialtexture, the
world a visible spirit, the spiritual within us rises out of its

darkness, loses something of its weight and body, and swims up
towards heaven. This road that was a mere rutted white dust, hot

underfoot, blinding to the eye, is now a soft grey silence, with
the glitter of a crystal grain set starlike in its silver here

and there. Overhead, riding serenely through the spacious blue,
is the mother of the silence, she who has spiritualised the

world, alone save for two attendant steady shining stars. And in
silence under her benign influence, under the benediction of her

light, rode our two wanderers side by side through the
transfigured and transfiguring night.

Nowhere was the moon shining quite so brightly as in Mr.
Hoopdriver's skull. At the turnings of the road he made his

decisions with an air of profoundpromptitude (and quite
haphazard). "The Right," he would say. Or again "The Left," as

one who knew. So it was that in the space of an hour they came
abruptly" target="_blank" title="ad.突然地；粗鲁地">abruptly down a little lane, full tilt upon the sea. Grey beach

to the right of them and to the left, and a little white cottage
fast asleep inland of a sleeping fishing-boat. "Hullo!" said Mr.

Hoopdriver, sotto voce. They dismounted abruptly" target="_blank" title="ad.突然地；粗鲁地">abruptly. Stunted oaks
and thorns rose out of the haze of moonlight that was tangled in

the hedge on either side.
"You are safe," said Mr. Hoopdriver, weeping" target="_blank" title="a.掠过的 n.扫除；清除">sweeping off his cap with an

air and bowing courtly.
"Where are we?"

"SAFE."
"But WHERE?"

"Chichester Harbour." He waved his arm seaward as though it was a
goal.

"Do you think they will follow us?"
"We have turned and turned again."

It seemed to Hoopdriver that he heard her sob. She stood dimly
there, holding her machine, and he, holding his, could go no