For seconds which seemed hours, Virginia, held by fright, could not move.

Her eyes, wide with horror, stared back at the motionless motorcyclist.

His flattened figure resembled a bundle of old clothes dropped carelessly in the roadway. Certain that the man was dead, the terrible thought came to the girl that she was responsible for it. She could hear herself saying, "Hurry, Ike." It made her frantic, she could not sit still and yet she wondered if she had the strength to move. In a moment, she found herself standing. Hardly knowing what she did, she climbed from the car and moved slowly towards the figure lying in the dust. She watched it fearfully, as if it might suddenly leap at her. Now she saw the face. How dreadfully white it was. Surely he was dead. The pity of this great fellow lying helpless in the street moved her strangely.

The pathos of his weakness wrung her heart.

The bystander removed his coat intending to make a pillow of it. Guessing his purpose, Virginia hastened to the car and brought back a cushion.

"Thank you, that will be better," he told her. Taking the cushion, he held it irresolutely as though planning how best to use it.

"May I help?" To Virginia it seemed that the words came of their own accord. She doubted if she had the strength to do anything.

"If you would, please? When I lift his head, will you push the cushion under?"

The girl dropped upon her knees in the dust of the roadway. It brought her face very near to that of the unconscious man. She noticed that he was young, not much older than herself. When the cushion was placed it lifted his head into an awkward position. Readjusting the cushion, Virginia pushed it too far. The motorcyclist's head slid over and rested against her knee. For an instant she hesitated and then, making a pillow of her lap, she very gently lifted his head into it.

"That's better. That's the stuff," approved the bystander. Noticing her pallor, he added, "If you can do it."

"I--I--I will be all right," she hesitatingly rea.s.sured him. Yet, at the moment, she was not at all sure of herself. Was she not holding the head of a dead youth in her lap? It had shifted and a rivulet of blood oozed from a small wound in the forehead, formerly hidden. A deathly sickness swept the girl. But even as it seized her came a determination to fight her feelings and conquer them. She would not faint.

The motorcyclist groaned. Virginia almost dropped his head in alarm. He wasn't dead, but certainly that melancholy sound marked the pa.s.sing of his soul. Other groans followed of such grievous quality that she was sure each one was his last.

"He's coming around, I believe," declared the bystander.

The words reawakened hope in Virginia's breast. "Isn't he dead?" she murmured gently.

"No." The voice came from her lap.

Her startled blue eyes dropped. Two wide open black eyes looked up into them wonderingly for an instant and the lids closed.

"Lord," moaned the stricken one in unmistakable language.

"He's praying," thought Virginia and solemnly bowed her head.

Ike returned, followed soon by a doctor.

"He's regained consciousness," the bystander told the medical man.

The physician knelt by the injured youth. He listened to his heart and then started to lift an eyelid when both lids opened so wide that Virginia was enabled to confirm her previous impression that the motorcyclist's eyes were black. The doctor felt the man's body and the groans redoubled as he touched one of the legs. The medical man straightened up. "His head seems to be all right. There is a fracture of the right leg and probably a rib or two broken. He is lucky to get off so easy. He will be a ma.s.s of bruises, too, I suppose," he announced.

He glanced curiously at the waiting car and then at Virginia and went on, "You are Obadiah Dale's daughter, are you not?"

As she nodded her a.s.sent, he asked, "How did the accident happen?"

"I was to blame," confessed Virginia, her eyes filling with tears.

"You weren't driving the car?" he argued sympathetically and when she admitted it, "I don't see how you can be in fault."

"I was though, doctor."

He gave her an enveloping professional glance. The pale face and the flood of tears fighting to break their dams did not escape him. "You are suffering from the shock of the accident. You have been under a strain and are nervous and unstrung."

Ike considered this an appropriate moment to make public outcry. "Dat man was to blame. Ran smack into me. Lak to punch er hole in de tiah wid 'is haid. Ah gwine look fo' er punkcher," he a.s.sured the crowd which had a.s.sembled.

This attempt to win public favor at the expense of a semi-unconscious opponent filled the doctor with indignation. "You talk like a fool,"

he informed the chauffeur. "Without inquiring into the matter I conclude that you are to blame. You help me carry this man under the trees and make him comfortable until I can call an ambulance."

The snap judgment of the medical man apparently struck Ike as of uncontrovertible accuracy, because he prepared in silence to a.s.sist in caring for the injured until Virginia suggested,

"Why not take the man in our machine and get him to the hospital so much quicker?"

"Very good," agreed the doctor. He eyed Ike sternly. "It's not a question of speed now. There has been too much of that around here in my opinion."

"Yas'r," the chauffeur made illogical response. "Ah ain' no speeder.

Ah is de carefles' drivah in dis yere town. Safety fust. Dat's ma motta."

"Appearances are against you," the doctor snorted as he prepared a rough splint to protect the leg of the motorcyclist during his removal.

They placed the youth in the Dale car, the doctor holding him in his arms but using a middle seat to support the lower part of the body. Ike pulled down the other seat and, at a sign from the physician, Virginia took it.

As they slowly left the scene of the accident, the girl noticed that the arm of the youth nearest to her swung helplessly at every jolt of the car. Taking the hand in her own, she lifted it into her lap. When she released it, there was a faint movement as if the fingers searched for her own. Knowing him to be suffering, Virginia regrasped his hand and it seemed to her that there came an answering pressure as of appreciation.

Yet woe descended anew upon the girl. The youth could not walk. He could not talk. As she looked at his grotesquely postured body, she became convinced that he was dying. The doctor's remarks were to cheer her. No one could forecast the results of such an accident. The victim might pa.s.s away in the car. He was so young to die, a mere boy. She had killed him. Such thoughts were overwhelming her with fear when they reached the hospital.

In the reception room of the inst.i.tution, she awaited in dread the outcome of a more thorough examination. As she looked about her, there was nothing in the furnishing of the apartment to distinguish it from thousands of others except the faint, sickening odor of ether which told its own story.

A most attractive young woman in a nurse's uniform came across the hall from a small office opposite. "Were you with the emergency case Dr.

Millard brought?" she asked.

Virginia thought the blonde curls, beneath the cap, very attractive.

Also she approved of the hazel eyes. They seemed sympathetic and the overwrought girl longed for that. "I came with a motorcyclist who was hurt. I don't know the doctor's name," she responded.

"If you can give me the information about the patient I will fill out his card."

Virginia looked at the nurse in astonishment. "Why I don't know him. I never met him until he ran into our car."

"A violent introduction," giggled the nurse, and then, more seriously, "I am glad that it is not your husband."

"_Husband_," gasped Virginia, "on a _motorcycle_." Her face reddened in an embarra.s.sment the absurdity of which provoked her.

The nurse broke into a gale of soft laughter. "They come in automobiles, on motorcycles and on foot. Evidently, you don't care for those on motorcycles." She considered a moment. "I don't blame you. He would have so many accidents that you would never know whether you were wife or widow."

Virginia was uncomfortable. The strain of the most exciting day in her life was telling. The mischievous eyes of the nurse were not helping matters. "I think that I am quite young to be married," the girl announced with a prim dignity meant to suppress this frivolous person.

That sophisticated young woman shook anew with amus.e.m.e.nt. "Oh, I don't know. Have a look at our maternity ward."

The shot went wide of the mark with Virginia. "Oh," she exclaimed, with rapturous interest, "I'd love to. That's where you keep the babies, isn't it? I adore them."

"We were speaking of husbands, not babies, you know." The irrepressible nurse persisted. "They are closely related but not the same thing. That is, unless the wife, as many of them do, insists upon making a baby of her husband."

Husbands! Babies! Where was this strange conversation leading? Again an annoyed Virginia felt herself flush beneath the amused eyes of this very complacent young person. With a rush, horrible thoughts of the youth upstairs, surely suffering, possibly dying, through her fault, obsessed her. Yet this nurse could look at one with hazel eyes dancing with merriment. The mill owner's daughter whirled to a window, but, regardless of her efforts, the tears came.