At one moment they stood still, and then the motor car was rushing softly and swiftly down the station incline.

They turned one corner and another, followed the windings of a lane of villas, and then before them stretched the road.

The motor droned up to its topmost speed, and the black night swept past them.

Everything was very dark under the starlight, and the whole world crouched mysteriously and was gone without a sound.

Not a breath stirred the flying things by the wayside; the deserted, pallid white villas on either hand, with their black unlit windows, reminded him of a noiseless procession of skulls.
The driver beside him was a silent man, or stricken into silence by the conditions of his journey.