Sylvia cast an understanding, grateful upward look at her aunt and stepped into the car.  So far it had gone better than she feared.  But a tete-a-tete with Molly, overflowing with the confidences of the newly betrothed—­she was not sure that she could get through with that with credit.

Molly, however, seemed as little inclined to overflow as Sylvia to have her.  She talked of everything in the world except of Felix Morrison; and it was not long before Sylvia’s acuteness discovered that she was not thinking of what she was saying.  There passed through her mind a wild, wretched notion that Molly might after all know—­that Felix might have been base enough to talk about her to Molly, that Molly might be trying to “spare her.”  But this idea was instantly rejected:  Molly was not subtle enough to conceive of such a course, and too headlong not to make a hundred blunders in carrying it out; and besides, it would not explain her manner.  She was abstracted obviously for the simple reason that she had something on her mind, something not altogether to her liking, judging from the uneasy color which came and went in her face, by her rattling, senseless flow of chatter, by her fidgeting, unnecessary adjustments of the mechanism of the car.

Sylvia herself, in spite of her greater self-control, looked out upon the world with nothing of her usual eager welcome.  The personality of the man they did not name hung between and around the two women like a cloud.  As they swept along rapidly, young, fair, well-fed, beautifully dressed, in the costly, shining car, their clouded faces might to a country eye have been visible proofs of the country dictum that “rich city folks don’t seem to get no good out’n their money and their automobiles:  always layin’ their ears back and lookin’ ’bout as cheerful as a balky horse.”

But the country eyes which at this moment fell on them were anything but conscious of class differences.  It was a desperate need which reached out a gaunt claw and plucked at them when, high on the flank of the mountain, as they swung around the corner of a densely wooded road, they saw a wild-eyed man in overalls leap down from the bushes and yell at them.

Sylvia was startled and her first impression was the natural feminine one of fear—­a lonely road, a strange man, excited, perhaps drunk—­But Molly, without an instant’s hesitation, ground the car to a stop in a cloud of dust.  “What’s the matter?” she shouted as the man sprang up on the running-board.  He was gasping, purple, utterly spent, and for an instant could only beat the air with his hands.  Then he broke out in a hoarse shout—­the sound in that quiet sylvan spot was like a tocsin:  “Fire!  An awful fire!  Hewitt’s pine woods—­up that road!” He waved a wild, bare arm—­his shirt-sleeve was torn to the shoulder.  “Go and git help.  They need all the men they can git!”

He dropped from the running-board and ran back up the hill through the bushes.  They saw him lurch from one side to the other; he was still exhausted from his dash down the mountain to the road; they heard the bushes crash, saw them close behind him.  He was gone.