two
years. After the Peace with Idleness, came the motor mania, and I thought
of nothing else for a time. But when you have run your car for months,
motoring for its own sake ceases to be all in all. You ask yourself what
country you would like best to visit with the machine you love.

Pride kept me from answering that question with the name of "Spain"; but
it was because Biarritz is at the door of Spain that I had just invited
Dick Waring--the best of friends, the most delightful of Americans, who
fought side by side with me, for fun, in China--to drive there in my Gloria
car.

"Yes, they knew when I went to Barcelona," I admitted; for Dick was
familiar with the story. "But that was different. Anyhow, I'm going to
Biarritz, whatever happens. You can do as you like."

"If you _will_ go, I'll go too," said Dick; "and if anything happens I'll
be in it with you. But you may regret your rashness."

"I've never yet regretted rashness," I said. "Things done on impulse
always turn out for the best."

So we started from Paris the next day, and had a splendid run, through
scenery to set the spirit singing in tune with the thrumming of the motor.

Whatever was to happen in Biarritz, and I was far enough from guessing
then, nothing happened by the way; and we arrived on a morning of blue and
gold.

We put up at a private hotel out of the way from fashionable
thoroughfares; and, as my childhood and early youth were passed in
England, I could use an English name without making myself ridiculous by a
foreign accent. As for my brown face and black eyes, many a Cornishman has
a face as brown and eyes as black; therefore, I edited the name of Triana
into Cornish Trevenna, and changed Cristobal, my middle name, into
Christopher.

We took our first meal in the restaurant, and everyone at the little
tables near by, was talking of the King and "Princess Ena"; how pretty she
was, how much in love he; how charming their romance. My heart quite
warmed to my youthful sovereign, who has had seven fewer years on earth
than I. I felt that, if I had had a fair chance, I should have been his
loyal subject.

"I'd like to have a look at him," said I to Waring after lunch. "The lady
with the nose who sat on our left said to her husband with the chin, that
the King and the two Princesses motor every afternoon. We'll motor too;
and where they go, there we'll go also."

"Take care," said Dick.

"A cat may look at a king. So may Chris Trevenn