Driving Head-On

It was mid-afternoon when they began to pass through that series of
suburbs which the city has flung like a single tentacle northward for
a hundred miles along the eastern banks of the Hudson.

A smooth road of bluestone with a surface like velvet, rarely broken
by badly paved or badly worn sections, ran straight south. Past
mansions standing amid spacious lawns all ablaze with late summer and
early autumn flowers they sped; past parks, long stretches of walls,
high fences of wrought iron through which brief glimpses of woodlands
and splendid gardens caught Rue's eye. And, every now and then,
slowing down to traverse some village square and emerging from the
further limits, the great river flashed into view, sometimes glassy
still under high headlands or along towering parapets of mountains,
sometimes ruffled and silvery where it widened into bay or inland sea,
with a glimmer of distant villages on the further shore.

Over the western bank a blinding sun hung in a sky without a cloud--a
sky of undiluted azure; but farther south, and as the sun declined,
traces of vapours from the huge but still distant city stained the
heavens. Gradually the increasing haze changed from palest lavender
and lemon-gold to violet and rose with smouldering undertones of fire.
Beneath it the river caught the stains in deeper tones, flowing in
sombre washes of flame or spreading wide under pastel tints of
turquoise set with purple.

Now, as the sun hung lower, the smoke of every river boat, every
locomotive speeding along the shores below, lay almost motionless
above the water, tinged with the delicate enchantment of declining
day.