Casual conversations were apt to turn into casual flirtations with Ted Holiday.  Afterward he wasn’t sure whether she had dared him or he had dared her to plan the midnight joy ride which had so narrowly missed ending in a tragedy.  Anyway it had seemed a jolly lark at the time—­a test of the mettle and mother wit of both of them to “get away with it.”

And she had looked good to him last night when he met her at the appointed trysting place after “As You Like It.”  She had come out of the shadows of the trees behind which she had been lurking, wearing a scarlet tam-o’-shanter and a long dark cloak, her eyes shining like January stars.  He had liked her nerve in coming out like that to meet him alone at midnight.  He had liked the way she “sassed” him back and put him in his place, when he had tried impudently enough to kiss her.  He had liked the way she laughed when he asked her if she was afraid to speed, on the home stretch.  It was her laugh that had spurred him on, intoxicated him, made him send the car leaping faster and still faster, obeying his reckless will.

Then the crash had come.  It was indeed a miracle that they had not both been killed.  No thanks to the rash young driver that they had not been.  It would be many a day before Ted Holiday would forget that nightmare of dread and remorse which took possession of him as he pulled himself to his feet and went over to where the girl’s motionless form lay on the grass, her face dead white, the blood flowing from her forehead.

Never had he been so thankful for anything in his life as he was when he saw her bright eyes snap open, and heard her unsteady little giggle as she murmured, “My, but I thought I was dead, didn’t you?”

Game to her fingertips she had been.  Ted acknowledged that, even now that the glamour had worn off.  Never once had she whimpered over her injuries, never hurled a single word of blame at him for the misadventure that had come within a hair’s breadth of being the last for them both.

“It wasn’t a bit more your fault than mine,” she had waived aside his apologies.  “And it was great while it lasted.  I wouldn’t have missed it for anything, though I’m glad I’m not dead before I’ve had a chance to really live.  All I ask is that you won’t tell a soul I was out with you.  Grandpa would think I was headed straight for purgatory if he knew.”

“I won’t,” Ted had promised glibly enough, and had kept his promise even at the cost of lying to his uncle, a memory which hurt like the toothache even now.

But looking at the girl now in her tawdry, inappropriate garb he suffered a revulsion of feeling.  What he had admired in her as good sport quality seemed cheap now, his own conduct even cheaper.  His reaction against himself was fully as poignant as his reaction against her.  He was suddenly ashamed of his joy ride, ashamed that he had ever wished or tried to kiss her, ashamed that he had fallen in with her suggestion for a clandestine meeting this afternoon.