The messenger left on his bicycle, but had not gone farther than around the first corner when a gentleman drew up beside him in an automobile.

“Hey, kid, I want to speak to you,” said Mr. Rangar.

The boy stopped and the car stopped.

“You’ve got a message there that I’m interested in,” said Rangar.  “It isn’t sealed.  I want a look at it.”  He held out a five-dollar bill.  The boy pocketed the bill and handed over the message, which Rangar read and returned to him.  Then Rangar drove to the office from which the boy had come and dispatched a message of his own, one not covered by his instructions from Mr. Foote.  It was a private matter with him, inspired by an incident of the morning having to do with a rumpled necktie and a ruffled dignity.  The malice which had glittered in his eyes then was functioning now.

Rangar’s message was to Dulac.

“Your girl’s just gone to Apple Lake with young Foote in his car,” it said.  That was all, but it seemed ample to Rangar.

Bonbright was not a reckless driver, but he drove rapidly this evening, with a sort of driven eagerness.  From, time to time Ruth turned and glanced at his face and wondered what could have happened, for she had never seen him like this before, even in his darkest moments.  There was a new element in his bearing, an element never there before.  Discouragement, apathy, she had seen, and bitterness.  She had seen wistfulness, hopelessness, chagrin, humiliation, but never until now had she seen set determination, smoldering embers of rage.  What, she wondered, could this boy’s father have done to him now?

Soon they were beyond the rim of industry which banded the city, and, leaving behind them towering chimneys, smokeless for the night, clouds of released working-men waiting their turns to crowd into overloaded street cars, the grimy, busy belt line which extended in a great arc through the body of the manufacturing strip, they passed through sprouting, mushroomlike suburban villages—­villages which had not been there the year before, which would be indistinguishable from the city itself the year after.  Farther on they sped between huge-lettered boards announcing the location of real-estate developments which as yet consisted only of new cement sidewalks, immature trees promising future shade, and innumerable stakes marking lot boundaries.  Mile after mile these extended, a testimonial to the faith of men in the growth of their city. ...  And then came the country, guiltless of the odors of gregarious humanity, of gasses, of smokes, of mankind itself, and of the operations which were preparing its food.  Authentic farms spread about them; barns and farmhouses were dropped down at intervals; everywhere was green quiet, softened, made to glow enticingly by the sun’s red disk about to dip behind the little hills. ...  All this Ruth saw and loved.  It was an unaccustomed sight, for she was tied to the city.  It altered her mood, softened her, made her more pliable.  Bonbright could have planned no better than to have driven her along this road. ...