g in pale wonderment at
my bed-side, sickness quite a novel thing to her: and, indeed, this was
my first serious illness since my twentieth year or thereabouts, when I
had over-worked my brain, and went a voyage to Constantinople. I could
not move from bed for some weeks, but happily did not lose my senses,
and she brought me the whole pharmacopoeia from the shops, from which to
choose my medicines. I guessed the cause of this illness, though not a
sign of it came near her, and as soon as my trembling knees could bear
me, I again set out--always Westward--enjoying now a certain luxury in
travelling compared with that Turkish difficulty, for here were no
twisted metals, more and better engines, in the cities as many good
petrol motors as I chose, and Nature markedly less savage.

I do not know why I did not stop at Verona or Brescia, or some other
neighbourhood of the Italian lakes, since I was fond of water: but I
had, I think, the thought in my head to return to Vauclaire in France,
where I had lived, and there live: for I thought that she might like
those old monks. At all events, we did not remain long in any place till
we came to Turin, where we spent nine days, she in the house opposite
mine, and after that, at her own suggestion, went on still, passing by
train into the valley of the Isere, and then into that of the Western
Rhone, till we came to the old town of Geneva among some very great
mountains peaked with snow, the town seated at the head of a long lake
which the earth has made in the shape of the crescent moon, and like the
moon it is a thing of much beauty and many moods, suggesting a creature
under the spell of charms and magics. However, with this idea of
Vauclaire still in my head, we left Geneva in the motor which had
brought us at four in the afternoon of the 17th May, I intending to
reach the town called Bourg that night about eight, and there sleep, so
to go on to Lyons the next morning by train, and so, by the Bordeaux
route, make Vauclaire. But by some chance for which I cannot to this
hour account (unless the rain was the cause), I missed the chart-road,
which should have been fairly level, and found myself on mountain
tracks, unconscious of my whereabouts, while darkness fell, and a
windless downpour that had a certain sullen venom in its superabundance
drenched us. I stopped several times, looking about for chateau,
chalet, or village, but none did I see, though I twice came upon railway
lines