she wants me to do, for I shall die if she doesn't
love me."

"Yes. I'd forgotten," said he.

"I hadn't, for a minute," I answered. "But I suppose, as mother is a
great actress, she loves Shakespeare and has all his works; and perhaps
she has Carlyle, too, in her library."

"Perhaps," he echoed.

"Don't you like her?" I asked. "You always look odd, and speak in a
short, snappy way when I talk of my mother."

"I like and admire her immensely," he answered, in that remote tone
which tries to frighten me, and does almost--but not quite. "All the
same, I don't think you'll find Carlyle in her library, so you'll have
to let me give him to you. But meanwhile, you shall learn to understand
him better by seeing the little village where he was born, and the house
his father the stonemason built."

So we started off in the car, going back to the highway and along a road
which perhaps would not have seemed extraordinary if it hadn't been made
surpassingly beautiful by men who lit the path of history with a shining
light. I had a gay, irresponsible feeling, sitting beside Sir S. on the
springy front seat of the luxurious motor-car, as if I were a neat
little parcel clearly addressed to my destination, and going there
safely by registered post. By this time even Mrs. James had ceased to
"bite her heart" when she saw another motor dashing toward us, or a man
sauntering across the road and filling the whole horizon. The car is so
singularly intelligent that you feel it is a friend, too kind-hearted
and chivalrous a creature to let anything bad happen. Of course, about
every ten minutes something _almost_ happens, but that is invariably the
fault of other people's cars. You dash up to the mouth of a cross-road
which you couldn't possibly have seen, because it is subtly disguised as
a clump of trees or a flowery knoll; and you discover its true identity
only because another motor--a blundering brute of a motor--bursts out at
fifty miles an hour in front of your nose. If you'd reached that point
an instant later, your own virtuous automobile and the wretch that isn't
yours would certainly have telescoped, and you'd have been sitting in
the nearest tree with your head in your lap. But already I begin to
notice that you may pretty well count on reaching the danger point
(produced by alien autos) at precisely the right instant, never the
wrong one, and this gives you a beautiful confidence in your luck and
your driver: although the r