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 kept the centre of the road it would be all right; but as one keeps of necessity to the left the lines between the lamps which guide the eye change with each instant. The effect is that straight lines appear to be curved; and if the driver loses nerve and trusts to appearances he will soon come to grief. This was Joy's first experience of driving in mist, and she naturally fell into the error. She got confused as to the right and wrong side of the road. She had to fight against the habit of her life, which instinctively took command when her special intention was in abeyance. She knew that from Dumfries the road dropped to the south-east and as the curve seemed away to the left from her side of the road she, thinking that the road to the left was the direct road, naturally inclined towards the right hand, when she came to a place where there were roads to choose. There was no one about from whom to ask the way; and she feared to descend from the car to look for a sign-post. The onus of choice was on her, and she took the right hand thinking it was straight ahead. For some time now she had been going slow, and time and distance had both spun out to infinitude; she had lost sense of both. She was tired, wearied to death with chagrin and responsibility. Everything around her was new and strange and unknown, and so was full of terrors. She did not know how to choose. She feared to ask lest the doing so might land her in new embarrassments. She knew that unless she got home in something like reasonable time her father would be not only deeply upset but furiously angry—and all that anger would be visited on Him. Oh she must get on! It was too frightful to contemplate what might happen should she have to be out all night … and after having gone out with a man against whom her father had already a grievance, though he owed him so much!

The change in the road, however, gave her some consolation; it was straight and smooth, and as the wind was