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Molly didn't move, but Aunt Mary descended the steps, relentless as fate; so I made the most of my information, and added a short disquisition on Arcachon oysters and oyster fishing, for the sake of retaining the Goddess's society. Unfortunately, however, I happened to remark that the oyster women wore trousers exactly like the men, and this so disgusted Miss Kedison that she incontinently dragged her niece from the contamination of the chauffeur's presence.

Next day was Sunday. Miss Randolph went to the English church, which is the prettiest I've ever seen in France, and afterwards, escorted by the chaplain with whom she'd made friends, went forth to see the sights, while I inquired as to how we might best proceed upon our way. While Miss Randolph and Miss Kedison read their prayer-books, I studied that useful volume, Les Routes de France, and was duly warned against the impracticable roads of the Landes. The one thing to do, according to the oracle, was to return to Bordeaux and make a long détour to Bayonne by Mont de Marsan. I knew Miss Randolph would dislike this plan, for she hates going back, and so do I. If I had been alone, or with you, I would have chanced it without a moment's hesitation, making straight for Bayonne by way of the forbidden Landes, with all its pitfalls. But I funked the idea of perhaps getting Her into a mess-and hearing Aunt Mary say "I told you so," as she invariably does when there's any trouble.

To my joy, however, plucky Parson Radcliff had actually advanced the idea of the Landes, during their excursion, and the Goddess sent for me on Sunday evening, full of enthusiasm. Far be it from me to dampen the ardour of youth; and early on Monday morning we started to follow the route La Teste, Sanguinet, Parentis, Yehoux, Liposthey, which names reminded Miss Randolph of Gulliver's Travels.

She and I were in fine spirits, expecting the unexpected, and bracing ourselves to encounter difficulties. There was mystery in the very thought of the Landes-that strange waste of forest and sand so little known outside its own people. I felt it, and so did Miss Randolph, I knew. How I knew I couldn't explain to you; but some electric current usually communicates her mood to me, and I should almost believe from various signs that it was so with her in regard to me, if I weren't a mere chauffeur in the lady's pay.

For some distance the going was good, but we were only reading the preface to the true Landes as yet; and when we reached the boundary post between the department of the Gironde and the real Landes, there was one of those sudden, complete changes I've mentioned in the quality of the road. To drive into this dim, pine-clad region was like driving back into the years a century or two. A motor-car was an anachronism, and if we came to grief our blood was upon our own heads. The way became grass-grown and rutty, and I was obliged to drive slowly. Deeper and deeper we penetrated into the forest, and deeper and deeper also we sank into the soft earth. Aunt Mary groaned and prophesied disaster as we crawled along in ruts up to our axles; but I think Miss Randolph and I would have perished sooner than retreat. I trusted in the Napier and she trusted in me. In one place the road had been mended with a covering of loose rocks rather than stones; we panted and crunched our way over them, enormously to the astonishment of the road-menders and one or two dark-faced peasants, perched like cranes on the old-fashioned stilts not yet utterly abandoned as a means of navigating this sea of sand and pines. Still, on we went, the engine labouring a little, like an overworked heart; but it was a loyal heart, and the tyres were trumps.

Miss Randolph said that if she were a tyre and condemned to such hard labour, she would burst out of sheer spite. I think Miss Kedison nearly did so as it was; but as for us (I suppose you can't conceive the satisfaction to a poor chauffeur of bracketing his lady and himself familiarly as "us"), we were intoxicated by the heavy balsam of the turpentine, for which every tree we passed was being sliced. On each a great flake of the trunk had been struck off with an axe, and a small earthen cup affixed to catch the resin, which is the heart's blood of the wounded tree. There was something Dante-esque in the effect of these bleeding wounds, among old, scarcely healed scars; and that effect was intensified by the shadowy gloom of the dense forest, and the never-ceasing sound of the wind among the high, dark branches, like the beating of surf upon an unseen shore.

At last, when the feeling was strong upon us that the ocean of pines had engulphed us, like Pharaoh's chariot in the Red Sea, we came upon a rambling village, called Parentis. As if to announce the arrival of the first motor car ever seen in the dim, forgotten Landes, the off front tire began to hiss. "I told you so!" said Aunt Mary. My eyes and Miss Randolph's met, and we both burst out laughing. It was a great liberty in me, and though I couldn't have helped it to save my neck, and became preternaturally solemn afterwards as a penance, I don't believe that the lady I should like to have for an aunt-in-law will ever forgive me. She ought, however, as this was our first accident with the Napier, while with poor little Miss Randolph's late esteemed Dragon, one breakfasted, lunched, dined, and supped on horrors. Besides, the Dragon invariably schemed to do its worst, far from human aid, while my long-suffering Napier had brought us to the very courtyard of the village inn before (as Miss Randolph expressed it) "sitting down to rest."

Inside this convenient courtyard I set about doing the repairs, jacking up the car, taking off the tyre, patching it, and getting it on again in twenty minutes; not bad for an amateur mécanicien All the people of the inn and many of the villagers gathered round to see the great sight, and Aunt Mary consoled herself by showing off her somewhat eccentric French to the landlady and her family.

There were three generations in this group, I took time to notice. A bowed and wrinkled old dame; her daughter, a strong, sad-faced woman in black; and a golden-haired granddaughter, about the prettiest creature I ever saw-bar one. And it was charming to see my Goddess laying herself out to be nice to the trio. Her personality (which is the last word in well-groomed, high-strung, vivacious American girlhood) contrasted strikingly with these countrywomen, who had perhaps never been outside their own forest. I couldn't hear what she was saying, but she has the most extraordinary way of always hitting on the right thing to please and interest people, without departing from truth or descending to flattery. All three gazed at her with delight and admiration, the little beauty of the Landes with deepening colour and wistful eyes. No Frenchwoman, no Englishwoman, no woman save an American of the best type, could have exactly that manner, which is indescribable to one who doesn't know. Strange for a vision like that to flash into these quiet lives, then flash away, never to be seen again-only remembered.

It was too early for luncheon, but as we had had the shelter of the inn I wanted to order something for "the good of the house." I accordingly asked for Bordeaux and biscuits, and the pretty rose of a granddaughter brought a bottle of-what do you think? Pontet Canet! It was nectar, and cost-three francs a bottle!

When we drove away Miss Randolph was reflective. I would have liked to offer a penny for her thoughts, but that sort of indulgence is not in the sphere of a chauffeur. Presently she broke out, however. "Did you ever see anything so lovely as that girl?" she exclaimed. "She's all white and gold and rose. Her presence in that sombre place reminds me of a shaft of warm, golden light breaking through the dark canopy of pines. She's like a maiden in Hans Christian Andersen. And her name's Angèle. Isn't that perfect? It seems cruel that such a creature, who would make a sensation in Paris or London or New York, must bloom and ripen and wither at last, unknown, in that wilderness. Oh, how I should love to snatch her away?"

"What would you do with her, miss, if you could?" I ventured to ask, at my humblest-which in Aunt Mary's eyes, is my best. "Would you take her for your maid?"

"A maid?" echoed my Goddess scornfully. "Why, if I meant such a crime as that, I should expect white bears to come out of these woods and devour me. No; I would give her pretty dresses, and arrange a good marriage for her."

"Is that what young girls in America like, miss," I meekly inquired, "to have marriages arranged for them?"

"No; they hate it, and go away from America to show that they hate it-sometimes; but this would be different," said she. And I wondered if she had accidentally betrayed anything.

At Liposthey we struck the direct road, with good surface, from Bordeaux to Bayonne. Thus on through Labouheyre to Castets, still walled in with dark, balsamic forest, where we lunched. Just beyond, however, we found that we were bidding the pines farewell, and we were regretting them despite the beauty of the road-increasing every moment-when suddenly we had a great surprise. At what precise point it came I don't quite know, for I was snatched up out of the dull "flatland" of facts. Miss Randolph was driving, and I was glancing interestedly about, as an intelligent young man of the working-class may, when away to the left I saw up in the skies a long chain of blue, serrated mountains looking far too high to belong to this world. I started on my seat; then Miss Randolph saw what I saw. "Oh-h!" she breathed, with a responsive sigh of appreciation. Not an adjective; not a word. I blessed her for that. Unfortunately, Aunt Mary seized this moment to awake, and she did not spare us fireworks. She never does. She is one of those women who insist upon your knowing that they have a soul for beauty. But she went to sleep again when she had used up all her rockets, and left the Goddess and me alone with the Pyrenees. Much nearer Bayonne we had another surprise-a notice, in English, by the roadside: "To the Guards' Cemetery." An odd sign to come across in France, n'est ce pas, mon brave? And just as I was calling up the past, Miss Randolph exclaimed; "I wonder if your Napier is any relation to that Napier?" which shows that she has the Peninsular Campaign at her finger-ends; or else Aunt Mary has been cramming her out of a guide-book.

It was not late in the afternoon when we crossed the bridge over the Adour (she says the proverb, "Don't cross your bridges till you get to them," can't apply to France, as you're always getting to them), but already the sky was burnished with sunset; and if there's anything finer than a grand and ancient fortified gateway turned to copper by the sun, I don't know it. I advised Miss Randolph to come back one day from Biarritz, if we stayed long enough, to see the exquisite old glass window for which the Bayonne cathedral is famous; but it was too late to pause for such details as windows then, so we flew on along the switchback road over the remaining five miles to Biarritz. Here, in this agreeable town, we play about till I have orders from headquarters to proceed. Our programme is now to go straight along the Pyrenees to Marseilles, and so to Nice. Ah, if only I can get Her to go on to Italy! You had better address me next at the Riviera Palace, Cimiez. We are to pause at Pau, call at Carcassonne, and honour other places en route to the Riviera, so there ought to be ample time for this long screed to reach you and for you to send reproach or praise to Nice. Tell me about yourself; how you are; what you read; what girl you love.

Your sincere, but somewhat selfish friend,

Jack Winston.

MOLLY RANDOLPH TO HER FATHER

Hotel Gassion, Pau,

December 14.

Dear Universal Provider of Love and Cheques,

Thank you a thousand times for both, which have just been forwarded along the route of this "wild-goose chase," as you call it. Well, if it is one, I don't know who the goose is, unless Aunt Mary. She is rather like that sometimes, poor dear; but we get on splendidly. Oh, I would get on splendidly with five Aunt Marys (which Heaven forbid!), for I'm so happy, Dad! I'm having such a good time-the time of my life, or it would be if you were in it.

If you ever lose all your money and come a nice, gentlemanly cropper in the street called Wall, we might come to Biarritz to live, just you and I. We would have fun! And we could stop in our pretty little cheap villa all the year round, for one season only waits politely till another is out to step in; it's always gay and fashionable, and yet you needn't be either unless you like. And the sea and sky have more gorgeous colour in them than any other sea and sky, and the air has more ozone; and the brown rocks that go running a hippopotamus race out into the beryl-green water are queerer and finer than any other rocks. So you see everything is superlative, even the hotels, and as for a certain Confectioner; but he, or rather she, deserves a capital. There are drives and walks, and curio-shops where I spent my little all; and there's fox-hunting, which would be nice if it weren't for the poor tame fox; and golf, and petits cheveaux at the casino, where Aunt Mary gambled before she knew what she was doing, and kept on a long time after she did; and mysterious Basque persons with ancestors and costumes more wonderful than anybody else's, who dance strange dances in the streets for money, and play a game called La Pelotte, which is great sport to watch. And you walk by the sea, with its real waves, like ours at home, not little tuppenny-ha'penny ones like those I saw in the English Channel; and you look across an opal bay through a creamy haze to a mystic land made entirely of tumbled blue mountains. And then, one of the best things about Biarritz is that you're next door to Spain. Ah, that door of Spain! I've knocked and been in through it, but just across the threshold. The way of it was like this-

I'd been up early and out to the golf course for a lesson from the professional; when I came home a little before eleven Brown was waiting. He wanted to know if I wouldn't care to have a peep at Spain, and said that we could easily go there and back by dinner-time. Aunt Mary and I were ready in a "jiffy," so was the car, and we were buzzing away along a beautiful road (though a little "accidentée," as the French say) near the ocean. There were the most lovely lights I ever saw on land or sea, over the mountains and the great, unquiet Atlantic; and St. Jean de Luz, which we came to in no time, as it seemed, was another charming little watering-place for us to come and live if you get poor. A good many English people do live there all the year round, and whom do you think is one of them? George Gissing. You know how I made you read his books, and you said they seemed so real that you felt you had got into the people's houses by mistake, and ought to say "Excuse me"? Well, he has come to live in St. Jean de Luz, the all-knowing Brown tells me. His master admires Mr. Gissing very much, so the Honourable John must be a nice and clever man.

As for history, Brown is an inexhaustible mine. I simply "put in my thumb and pull out a plum." But I forgot-there aren't usually plums in mines, are there, except in the prospectuses? Anyhow, it was Brown who made me realise what tremendously interesting things frontiers are. That imaginary line, and then-people, language, costumes, and customs changing as if a fairy had waved a wand. The frontier between France and Spain is a great wide river-on purpose to give us another bridge. Doesn't the name, "Bidassoa," suggest a broad, flowing current running swiftly to the sea?

This time we would have none of the bridge. It was too much bother paying duty on the car, and having a lot of red tape about getting it back again in an hour or two; so we left Balzac, as I have named it, at the last French town and rowed across, on past the first Spanish town, Irun, to a much older, more picturesque one-Fuenterrabia. A particularly handsome boatman wanted to row us, but Brown would do it himself, either to show how well he can manage the oars, or else because the boatman had abnormally long eyelashes, and Brown is rather sick of eyelashes.

Even crossing the river and going down towards the mouth of the stream (with a huge, old ruined castle towering up to mark Fuenterrabia) was quite thrilling, because of the things in history that have happened all around. The estuary runs down to the sea between mountains of wild and awesome shapes. One of them is named after Wellington, because it is supposed to look like his profile lying down, and the other mountains had a chance to see his real profile many times, though I'll be bound his enemies never saw his back. He fought among them-both mountains and enemies, and the latter were some of Napoleon's smartest marshals. He took a whole army across the ford in the Bidassoa, attacked Soult, and chased him all the way up the mountains to the very summit of La Rhune, a great conical peak high up in the sky. Another thing was the Isle des Faisans, right in the middle of the river, where Philippe and Louis the Fourteenth fixed everything up about Louis' Spanish bride. It's the smallest island you ever saw; you wouldn't think there would be room for a whole King of Spain and a King of France to stand on it at the same time, much less sign contracts.

When our boat touched Spanish soil on the beach below Fuenterrabia, two rather ferocious-looking Spaniards in uncomfortable uniforms were waiting for us. They had the air of demanding "your money or your life"; but after all it was only the extraordinarily high, ugly collars of their overcoats which gave them such a formidable appearance. They were custom-house officers guarding the coast, though how they see over those collars to find out what's going on under their noses I don't know. Brown says that soldiers at Madrid have to dress like that in winter to protect themselves from the terrible icy winds, and as Madrid sets the fashion for everything in Spain, the provincial soldiers have to choke themselves in the same way.

It did seem to me that the very air of Spain was different from across the river in France. It was richer and heavier, like incense. It is nice to have an imagination, isn't it, instead of having to potter about leading facts by a string, as if they were dogs? Well, anyway, I am sure people have bigger and blacker eyes in Spain. Just walking up from the beach to the strange old town, I saw two or three peasant women and children with wonderful eyes, like black velvet with stars shining through-eyes that princesses would give fortunes for.

I couldn't help humming "In Old Madrid" under my breath, and I fancied that the salt-smelling breeze brought the snapping of castanets. The sun was hot; but coolness, and rich, tawny shadows swallowed us up in a silent street, crowded with fantastic, beautifully carved, bright-coloured houses, all having balconies, each one more overhanging than the other. Not a soul was to be seen; our footsteps rang on the narrow side-walk, and it seemed rude of our voices when we talked to wake the sleepy silence out of its afternoon nap. But suddenly a handsome young man appeared from a side street, and stopping in the middle of the road, vigorously tinkled a musical bell. Immediately the street became alive. Each house door showed a man; women hung over the gaily-draped balconies; children ran out and clustered round the bell-ringer. He began to speak very fast in guttural Spanish, and we couldn't understand a word he said, though Brown has a smattering of the language-enough to get on with in shops and hotels. When he had finished everyone laughed. All up and down the street came the sound of laughter; deep, bass laughter from the men; contralto laughter from the women. The handsome bell-ringer laughed too, and then vanished as suddenly as he had come. All the life of the quaint street seemed to fade away with him. Slowly the people took themselves indoors; the balconies were empty; the street silent as in a city of the dead. It was like something on the stage; but I suppose it's just a bit of everyday life in Fuenterrabia and old, old Spain.

We went on up to the castle we had seen from the beach, and I turned my eyes away from a big, ugly round building, like a country panorama-place, for that was the bull ring, and the one thing that makes Spain hateful to me. I didn't want even to think of it. The gateway of the palace-for it had been a palace-was splendid-an arch across the street. But on the other side I burst out laughing at a sign, in what was meant to be English, advertising the castle for sale. Capitals were sprinkled about everywhere; the painter had thought they would look pretty, and evidently it was held out as a lure to Britishers and Americans that Charles the Fifth had built it and lived in it. I know Mrs. Washington Potts would love to buy it, and then go home and mention in an absent-minded manner that she'd "acquired a royal palace in Spain as a winter residence." Can't you hear her? But oh, poor palace! It's as airy a mansion now as most castles in Spain, though what's left of its walls is about fifteen feet thick. Still, the glorious view of sea and mountains from the roof would be worth paying for, and wouldn't need thousands of dollars' worth of restoration, like the house.

While we lingered in Fuenterrabia absorbing the atmosphere of old Spain, the time was inconsiderate enough to run away and leave us with only a twisted channel among sand-banks to remember it by. So we took an oddly shaped carriage with a white tasselled awning on it and drove back to Hendaye and our motor-car. But the day was a great success, and I congratulated Brown, which Aunt Mary said it was silly to do, as it is his business to think of everything for us.

Now, as you see by the date of my letter, we're at Pau, to which we came from Biarritz in a delicious morning's run through a pearl-coloured landscape trimmed with blue mountains. As we got into the town the Lightning Conductor, who was driving, whisked us through a few streets, swooped round a large square, and suddenly stopped the car on a broad terrace with an air as though he said, "There! what do you think of that?" I think I gasped. I know I wanted to by way of saluting what must be one of the most wonderful views in the whole world.

We had stopped on a terrace not the least like a street. At one end was an old grey château; then a long line of imposing buildings, almost too graceful to be hotels, which they really were; a church sending a white, soaring spire into the blue sky; an open, shady place, with a statue of Henri Quatre; villas hotels, hotels villas in a sparkling line, with great trees to cut it and throw a blue haze of shadow. That is one side of the terrace. The other is an iron railing, a sudden drop into space, and-the view. Your eyes travel across a park where even in this mid-winter season roses are blooming and date palms are flourishing. Then comes a hurrying river, giving life and music to the landscape; beyond that a wide sweep of hills, with bunches of poplars, and valleys where white villages lie half concealed; and further still, leaping into the sky, the immense line of the Pyrenees, looking to-day so near and sharply outlined that they seemed to be cut out of cardboard. When I was able to speak I told Brown that the very first thing I should do would be to walk to those delectable mountains. "I don't think you could quite manage it, miss," he said, with his quiet smile, "for they are nearly forty miles away." Then we turned round and drove into the courtyard of the hotel, which faces the great view.

It looked tremendously swell, and Aunt Mary and I tried to live up to it by sweeping haughtily in as if we hadn't collected any of the historic dust of France on our motoring coats and hats. Just as we were acquitting ourselves quite creditably who should step out from a group of the very people we were hoping to impress with our superiority but Jimmy Payne! Oh, you wicked old man, I believe you must have wired or written him a hint. You know you have a weakness for Jimmy, or rather for his family. But I can't go about marrying the sons of all the pretty ladies you were in love with in your vanished youth. Probably there were dozens, for you're as soft-hearted as you are hard-headed, and you can't deny it.

Still, I don't mind confessing that I was rather pleased to see Jimmy, not a bit because he is Jimmy, but because he seemed to bring a breath of homeyness with him, and it is nice to have an old friend turn up in a "far countree" when you've got dust on your hat and the other women who are staring at you haven't. If only the friend doesn't proceed to bore you by insisting on being something more than a friend, which I hope Jimmy is by this time tired of doing, I think I shall rather enjoy the encounter than otherwise. As for anything else, it doesn't appeal to me that he's his mother's son, or that he's clever in stocks, or that he's got as much money as you have. So now you know, and I hope he does.

Well, we talked a little, and then I found that Aunt Mary was chattering like mad with the Garrisons (one "talks" oneself; other people "chatter"; foreigners "jabber"); so we were all glad to see each other, or said so, which comes to the same thing.

"How's your automobile?" was almost the first thing I asked Jimmy, for the last time I'd seen him it was the pride of his heart. "I suppose," I said, "that, like us, you're making a tour around Europe on it?"

I thought his face changed a little, though I don't know why it should. "Oh," said he, "I've lent it to my friend Lord Lane; charming fellow I met last year in Paris. He'll meet me with it a little later. Where are you going after this?"

"We're working slowly on to the Riviera," said I.

"Oh, isn't that funny," said Jimmy, "that's where Lord Lane and I are going to meet! At Cannes, or Nice, or Monte Carlo; it isn't quite settled yet which. I suppose you're going to all of them, as you're driving about on a car?"

I said that we expected to, and pointed through the glass door at my automobile, with Brown superintending the hotel servants who were lifting down the luggage. He looked hard at the car and the chauffeur, as if he envied me both, and I think he had something more to say which he considered important, but I was in a hurry to change and make myself prettier-much prettier-than the Garrison girls.

By the way, they-the Garrisons-suggested that we should sit at a small table with them, where they've already given a place to Jimmy. We accepted the invitation, and now we've just dined together. My frock was a dream; it's always nice to come to the sort of hotel where one can wear something pretty, as here and at Biarritz. Afterwards we all put on coats and cloaks and strolled in the moonlight on the terrace. Jimmy tried to call up from the "vasty deep" of his broken (?) heart the spirit of the Past, with a capital P, but I would force him into the track of automobilism instead. I don't believe he knows a bit more than I do about it, if as much, now that I've learned such a lot from the Lightning Conductor, and if he takes to boasting I'll just show him.

Now, good-night, my dear old Dad. I shall treat myself to a "night-cap" draught of mountain air before I go to bed on my balcony facing the Pyrenees.

Your

Molly-who-loves-only-you.