"Was it Morton's car that just went past the door?" he asked her.
"Yes," she replied, shrinking away from him.
"Did you see him, and talk with him, before he went away?" he asked, partly reaching out one hand, but instantly withdrawing it.
"Yes," she answered again, retreating still farther from him.
"That was like you, Patricia. I am rather sorry for the poor chap, despite what he did to you, to-night. You see, I know what it means, to be so madly in love with you that it is barely possible for one to stand or sit beside you, without crushing you in one's arms. Oh, Patricia, won't you be kind to me? Won't you forgive me, too, as I know, just now, you forgave that poor chap? Surely, my offense was not so great as his."
"It has been infinitely greater," she told him, coldly; and, with head erect, but with averted face, she went past him, through the doorway.
Down the highway, half-way between Cedarcrest and the city, was a place where building operations were in progress; where huge rocks had been blasted out to make room for intended improvements; where derricks and stone-crushers and other machinery were idly waiting the dawn of another day, when the workmen would arrive and resume their several occupations.
Richard Morton, dashing along this highway with ever-increasing speed, utilizing the full power of his racing roadster, remembered that place along the highway. With cold, set face and protruding chin, he set his jaws sharply together, and wondered why his flying car would go no faster. He did not realize that he was covering more than a mile with every minute of time. The pace seemed slow to him, for he had suddenly determined what he would do. He had thought of a plan to expiate his follies of the night.
At last, almost directly beneath an arc-light along the highway, he saw, dimly, the spot where the stone was being quarried, and, as he recognized it, he laughed aloud with a sort of desperate joy, because of the plunge he intended to take. He threw the throttle wide open, and after another moment he saw the derrick loom before him. With careful deliberation, he turned the steering-wheel.
There was a loud crash in the darkness; the roadster leaped into the air like a live thing, and turned over, end for end, twice. Then, it seemed to shoot high into the air, and fell again, in a confused heap of wreckage, among the broken stones of the quarry. Morton was thrown from it, like the projectile from a catapult, and he came down in a crumpled heap, somewhere among that mass of rocks; and after that there was silence.