Park Road had been the scene of the lesson for three nights.  It was level, and it was unfrequented.  “And the doctor’s handy in case you break your neck,” Louis had said.  Dr. Yardley’s red lamp shone amicably among yellow lights, and its ray with theirs was lost in the mysterious obscurities of the closed park.  Not only was it socially advisable for Rachel to study the perverse nature of the bicycle at night—­for not to know how to ride the bicycle was as shameful as not to know how to read and write—­but she preferred the night for the romantic feeling of being alone with Louis, in the dark and above the glow of the town.  She loved the sharp night wind on her cheek, and the faint clandestine rustling of the low evergreens within the park palisade, and the invisible and almost tangible soft sky, revealed round the horizon by gleams of fire.  She had longed to ride the bicycle as some girls long to follow the hunt or to steer an automobile or a yacht.  And now her ambition was being attained amid all circumstances of bliss.

And yet she would shrink from beginning the lesson.

“The lamp!  You’ve forgotten to light the lamp!” she said.

“Get on,” said he.

“But suppose a policeman comes?”

“Suppose you get on and start!  Do you think I don’t know you?  Policemen are my affair.  Besides, all nice policemen are in bed....  Don’t be afraid.  It isn’t alive.  I’ve got hold of the thing.  Sit well down.  No!  There are only two pedals.  You seem to think there are about nineteen.  Right!  No, no, no!  Don’t—­do not—­cling to those blooming handle-bars as if you were in a storm at sea.  Be a nice little cat in front of the fire—­all your muscles loose.  Now!  Are you ready?”

“Yes,” she murmured, with teeth set and dilated eyes staring ahead at the hideous dangers of Park Road.

He impelled.  The pedals went round.  The machine slid terribly forward.

And in a moment Louis said, mischievously—­

“I told you you’d have to go alone to-night.  There you are!”

His footsteps ceased.

“Louis!” she cried, sharply and yet sadly upbraiding his unspeakable treason.  Her fingers gripped convulsively the handle-bars.  She was moving alone.  It was inconceivably awful and delightful.  She was on the back of a wild pony in the forest.  The miracle of equilibrium was being accomplished.  The impossible was done, and at the first attempt.  She thought very clearly how wondrous was life, and how perfectly happy fate had made her.  And then she was lying in a tangle amid dozens of complex wheels, chains, and bars.

“Hurt?” shouted Louis, as he ran up.