ty."

"I'm so glad," said Mrs. Fane. "Because you'll be able to see that
Michael remembers the address."

"I never forget addresses, mother," protested Michael.

"No, I know. I always think everyone is like me. Merry Christmas, and do
send a post card to Stella. She was so hurt you wouldn't go to Germany."

In the drench and soak of December weather they drove off in the
four-wheeler. On such a night it seemed more than ever romantic to be
setting out to Spain, and all the way to Victoria Maurice tried to
decide by the occasional gleam of a blurred lamp-light how many pesetas
one received for an English sovereign.

The crossing to Dieppe was rough, but all memories of the discomfort
were wiped out when next day they saw the Sud Express looking very long
and swift and torpedo-like between the high platforms of that white
drawing-room, the Gare d'Orleans. Down they went all day through France
with rain speckling the windows of their compartment, past the naked
poplar trees and rolling fallows until dusk fell sadly on the flooded
agriculture. Dawn broke as they were leaving behind them the illimitable
Landes. Westward the Atlantic clouds swept in from the Bay of Biscay,
parting momentarily to reveal rifts of milky turquoise sky. Wider and
wider grew the rifts, and when the train passed close to the green
cliffs of St. Jean de Luz, the air was soft and fragrant: the sea was
blue. At Irun they were in Spain, and Michael, as he walked up and down
the platform waiting for dejeuner, watched, with a thrill of conviction
that this was indeed a frontier, the red and blue toy soldiers and the
black and green toy soldiers dotted about the toy landscape.

Maurice was rather annoyed that nobody demanded their passports and that
every official should seem so much more anxious to examine their railway
tickets, but when they reached Madrid and found that no bull-fights
would be held before the spring, he began to mutter of Rome and was
inclined to obliterate the Spaniards from the category of civilization,
so earnestly had he applied himself by the jiggling light of the train
to the mastery of all the grades from matador to banderillo.

In Seville, however, Maurice admitted he could not imagine a city more
perfectly adapted to express all that he desired from life. Seville with
her guitars and lemon-trees, her castanets and oranges and fans, her
fountains and carnations and flashing Andalusians, was for him the city
to which one d