Helena’s knowledge of motor cars and engine trouble was not extensive—­she was conversant only with the “fool’s mate” of motoring.

“Maybe there’s no gasoline,” she suggested helpfully.

“Nonsense!” returned Thornton, with a laugh.  “I told Babson to see that the tank was full before he brought the car around—­he wouldn’t forget a thing like that.”

Thornton, nevertheless, tested the gasoline tank.

“Well?” inquired Helena, breaking the silence that followed.

“There is no—­gasoline,” said Thornton heavily.

Neither spoke for a moment.  There was no sound but the steady drip from the leaves.  Then Helena forced a laugh.

“Isn’t it ridiculous!” she said.  “That is what one is always making fun of others for.  I—­I don’t think it’s going to stop raining—­do you?  And we’re miles and miles from anywhere.  What do people do when they’re caught like this?”

Thornton did not answer at once.  Bitterly reproachful with himself, he stood there coatless in the rain.  If it had been a breakdown, an accident that was unavoidable, a little of the sting might have gone out of the situation—­but gasoline!  This—­from rank, blatant, glaring, inexcusable idiocy.  Not on his part perhaps—­but that did not lessen his responsibility.  They were miles, as she had said, from anywhere—­four miles at least in either direction from the main road, and as many more probably after that from any farmhouse—­he remembered that for half an hour before they had turned into the “short cut” they had seen no sign of habitation—­and what lay in the other direction, ahead, would in all probability be the same—­they were up in the timber regions, in the heart of them—­she couldn’t walk miles in the rain with the roads in a vile condition, and growing viler every minute as the rain sank in and the mud grew deeper.  And then another thought—­a thought that came now, sharp and quick, engulfing the mere discomfort of a miserable night spent there in the woods—­the clatter of busy, gossiping tongues seemed already to be dinning their abominable noises in his ears.  And that he, that he—­yes, it seemed to sweep upon him in a sudden, overmastering surge, the realization that the delight and joy of her companionship through the month that was gone was love that leaped now into fierce, jealous flame, maddened at a breath that would smirch her in the eyes of others—­that he should be the cause of it!  “What do people do when they’re caught like this?”—­in their innocence there seemed an unfathomed depth of irony in her words, but as he unconsciously repeated them they cleared his brain and brought him suddenly to face the immediate practical problem that confronted them.  What was to be done?

“Shall—­shall I get out?” she called to him, a hint of reminder in her tones that she had spoken to him before and received no answer.

Thornton moved back to the side of the car.