Page:A M Williamson - The Motor Maid.djvu/75

Rh path. The big blue car bounded up the steep road, laughing and purring, like some huge creature of the desert escaped from a cage, regaining its freedom. But every time we neared a curve it was considerate enough to slow down, just enough to swing round with measured rhythm, smooth as the rocking of a child's cradle.

Perhaps, thought I, the chauffeur was n't cross, but only concentrated. If I had to drive a powerful, untamed car like this, up and down roads like that, I should certainly get motor-car face, a kind of inscrutable, frozen mask that not all the cold cream in the world could ever melt.

I wondered if he resorted to cold cream, and before I knew what I was doing, I found myself staring at the statuesque brown profile through my talc triangle.

Evidently animal magnetism can leak through talc, for suddenly the chauffeur glanced sharply round at me, as if I had called him. "Did you speak?" he asked.

"Dear me, no, I should n't have dared," I hurried to assure him. Again he transferred his attention from the road to me, though only a fraction, and for only the fraction of a second. I felt that he saw me as an eagle on the wing might see a fly on a boulder toward which he was steering between intervening clouds.

"Why should n't you dare?" he wanted to know.

"One does n't usually speak to lion-tamers while they 're engaged in taming," I murmured, quite surprised at my audacity and the sound of my own voice.

The chauffeur laughed. "Oh!" he said.

"Or to captains of ocean liners on the bridge in thick fogs," I went on with my illustrations.