And as we ran I realized at last why we were running and what the race was and the hunt, and what our quarry.  I remembered that other slower chase that was yet so keen and so agonizing; that hunting down of the same tender flesh and blood, over the Channel and across a foreign country.  That was bad enough; but it was not like this.  For then I was alone in my hunting of Viola; there was nobody but me, who loved her, to see her run to earth and caught crouching in her corner.  That she would crouch, this time, and hide herself, I had no doubt.  This hunt that I shared with her sister and her servant was abominable to me and shameful.  And between the shame of that flight of hers and this flight there was no comparison.  You don’t go looking at belfries with Charlie Thesiger.  I could not reconcile that enchanting and enchanted Viola of the garden of Bruges with this dreadful flying figure.

I hated myself; I hated Kendal, the chauffeur, as I sat behind his tight, efficient body that quivered with the fury of the hunt. (To think that his blood should be up and against Viola!) I hated the car that seemed more than ever a living thing, that breathed and snorted and vibrated with the same passion, and was endowed with this incredible speed and this superhuman power.  With its black nose and white flanks, and its black hood and the black wings of its splash-boards, it was some terrible and sinister and malignant monster of prey hunting down Viola.  Its body had been built, its engines had been forged, to hunt down Viola.  The infernal thing had been invented to hunt down Viola.

Somewhere between Petworth and Fittleworth Kendal stopped to water his engine.  It was then that we noticed how the gathering heat was piled into a bank of cloud over the east.  At the back of our necks we could feel a little hot puff of wind that came up from the west.

“Shouldn’t wonder if there was a storm,” said Kendal.  He added, with the ghost of a grin, “If Mr. Jevons sees that cloud, sir, he’ll not wire to be met at Midhurst.  He’d crawl home on his ’ands and knees first.”

He slipped into his seat and we dashed on.

At Fittleworth, within a stone’s-throw of the railway and the road, there is a patch of moor where the ground rises in a hillock.  In July and August when the heather’s out this hillock is a crimson landmark above the water meadows.

When we came within sight of it Kendal suddenly slowed down, then jammed his brakes hard, and with an awful grinding and snorting the car came to a stand-still.

Kendal stood up.  He muttered something about being blowed.  Then he turned.

“Got the glasses there, sir?”

I found the glasses, but I didn’t give them to Kendal.  I stood up too and looked through them.

I couldn’t see anything at first.

“There, sir,” said Kendal, pointing.  “No.  You’re looking too much to the left.  You got to get right o’ thet sandy patch—­against thet there clump of heather.  Now d’you see, sir?”