each quarter-mile, so steep that it
seemed as if the car must take to running down hill backwards. But
always it went forging steadily up on the strongest speed with a
dependable, bumbling noise, never once faltering, though the Col di
Tenda wasn't as steep a gradient as this. Certainly, after one's faith
in the car has stopped wobbling, there was a kind of wild pleasure in
the experience, especially in looking over one's shoulder at the valleys
lying far below us, cut deep into the green heart of the mountain, as if
they had been hollowed out of an emerald. Suddenly the road gave a
twist, and instead of prancing in the air, lay down at the feet of a
grim, grey town, as a dog lies down at the feet of his master.

Mr. Barrymore stopped to see if the motor had got hot or burst a
blood-vessel or anything; but all was well, and when we had slipped on
our thick coats, those who had got out to walk the steepest hills--Sir
Ralph and Beechy--climbed in again. We had been a long time creeping up,
longer than Mr. Barrymore had calculated, and the chill of evening was
in the air. Besides, we were in the midst of the mountains now, and it
was hard to realize that we had ever felt too hot. As we drove along the
edge of ridge, a keen wind caught us. I shivered and felt as if there
were no more thickness to me than a paper doll; but I shouldn't have
dared to tell Beechy that, or she would have laughed, for I haven't got
my weight down yet to less than a hundred and fifty pounds. There was a
gnawing just under my new gold belt-buckle with the cat's-eyes on it, as
if the cats had claws as well as eyes, and I remembered that it was ages
since lunch. Maida and Beechy never appear to be hungry when they motor,
though, so _I_ wouldn't complain, for fear it might seem old and frumpy
to think of such material things. But five minutes later being cold or
hungry mattered as little as it would in a shipwreck.

The first thing that happened was a view--a view so unexpected and so
superb that I gaped at it with my mouth open. So far away, so far below,
that it was as if we looked down from a balloon sailing among the
clouds, two lakes were set like sapphires in a double ring of mountains,
whose greens and blues and purples were dimmed by a falling veil of
twilight. But through the veil, white villas gleamed on the dark
hillsides, like pearls that had fallen down the mountain-side,
scattering as they fell; and above, in the great pale dome of the s