Unexpected Night

Pine trunks in a double row started out of the mist as the headlights caught them, opened to receive the car, passed like an endless screen, and vanished. The girl on the back seat withdrew her head from the open window. “We’ll never get there at this rate,” she said. “We’re crawling.” The older woman sat far back in her corner, a figure of exhausted elegance. She said, keeping her voice low: “In this fog, I don’t think it would be safe to hurry.” “I should think it would be safer than keeping him up all night.” “We’ll see what Hugh thinks.”