Out of Context

The Day of the Beast
Zane Grey

They arranged the hour and then she went on her way home.

The big car sped through River Park. Rose shivered a little as she peered into the darkness of the grove. Then the car shot under the last electric light, out into the country, with the level road white in the moonlight, and the river gleaming below. There was a steady, even rush of wind. The car hummed and droned and sang. And mingled with the dry scent of dust was the sweet fragrance of new-mown hay. Far off a light twinkled or it might have been a star.

Swann put his arm around Rose. She did not shrink–she did not repulse him–she did not move. Something strange happened in her mind or heart. It was that moment she fell.

And she fell wide-eyed, knowing what she was doing, not in a fervor of excitement, without pleasure or passion, bitterly sure that it was better to be with some one she could not like than to be alone forever. The wrong to herself lay only in the fact tht she could not care.

Toward the end of June, Lane’s long vigil of watchfulness from the vantage-point at Colonel Pepper’s apartment resulted in a confirmation of his worst fears.