, goodness knows how far we'll get. As for Maida--she's no
mechanical doll like us. But do you know the play about the statue that
came to life?"

"Galatea?" I suggested.

"Yes, that's the name. Maida's like that; and I suppose she'll go back
as soon as she can, and ask to be turned into a statue again."

"What do you mean?" I ventured to inquire; for these hints of the
child's about her cousin were gradually consuming me to a grey ash with
curiosity.

"I can't tell you what _I_ mean, because I promised I wouldn't. But
that's what _Maida_ means."

"What she means?"

"Yes, to go back and be turned into a statue, forever and ever."

I ought to have been glad that the girl destined herself for a colder
fate than a union with a happy-go-lucky Irishman as poor as herself,
but somehow I was not glad. Watching the light glint on a tendril of
spun gold which had blown out from the motor-hood, I could not wish her
young heart to be turned to marble in that mysterious future to which
Beechy Kidder hinted she was self-destined.

"Perhaps I'd better make love to her myself," was the suggestion that
flashed into my mind; but innate canniness sturdily pushed it out again.
With my seven hundred a year, and _The Riviera Sun_ only just beginning
to shed a few golden beams, I could not afford to take a penniless
beauty off Terry's hands, even to save him from a disastrous marriage or
her from the fate of Galatea.

Yet what a day it was in which to live and love, and motor over perfect
roads through that radiant summer-land which the Ligurians loved, the
Romans conquered, and the modern world comes from afar to see.

Though it was early in April, with Easter but a few days behind us, the
sky, the air, the flowers, belonged to June--a rare, rich June to praise
in poetry or song. Billows of roses surged over old pink and yellow
stucco walls, or a soaring flame of scarlet geranium ran along their
tops devouring trails of ivy with a hundred fiery tongues. White villas
were draped with gorgeous panoply of purple-red bougainvillea; the
breeze in our faces was sweet with the scent of lemon blossoms and a
heavier under-tone of white-belled datura. Far away, over that polished
floor of lapis-lazuli which was the sea, summer rain-clouds boiled up
above the horizon, blue with the soft grey-blue of violets; and in the
valleys, between horned or pointed mountains, we saw spurts of golden
rain glittering in the morning sun.

What a world!