Page:Walpole--portrait of man with red hair.djvu/154

 Crispin and the girl. The night was black beyond their windows. Crispin pressed the button. The interior of the car was at once in darkness, and instantly the night was no longer black but purple and threaded with wisps of grey lavender that seemed to hold in their spider filigree all the loaded scent of the summer evening. Again, as the car turned into the long ribbon of the dark road, Harkness was conscious through the open window of the smell of innumerable roses, the late evening smell when the heat of the day is over and the flowers are grateful.

Then a curious thing happened. Through the darkness, Harkness felt one of the fingers of Crispin's left hand creeping like an insect about his knee. They were sitting very closely together inside the car's enclosure. Harkness was conscious that Hesther Crispin was pressed, almost crouching, against the corner of the car, and although the stuff of her dress touched him he was aware that she was striving desperately that he should not be aware of her proximity, and then directly after that, of why she was so striving—it was because she was shivering—shivering in little spasms and tremors that shook her from head to foot—and she was wishing that he should not realise this.

And even as he caught from her the consciousness of her trembling, at the same moment he was aware of the pressing of Crispin's finger upon his