nfair strain upon springs and tyres, and all
the while I was dreading that something would go. Threading our way
through endless vineyards by a labyrinth of by-ways, we ran through
Barbezieux and Libourne, and as day was falling crossed the noble bridge
over the Garonne into bustling Bordeaux.

Next day we took a run on the car along the Quai des Chartrons and
through some of the chief streets and squares of Bordeaux, just to get a
glimpse of the handsome town, at which Miss Randolph turned up her
pretty nose because it was "new and prosperous"; then, guided by a
porter from the hotel who went before us on his bicycle, we threaded the
city on our way out to Arcachon. There was some unavoidable _pave_ and
many odious tramlines; but at last our guide left us on the outskirts of
the town, and we sped on to a curious little toy suburb called St.
Martin, studded with neat, one-storied, red-roofed cottages, like houses
in a child's box of bricks, and all with romantic names, such as Belle
Idee, Mon Repos, Augustine, Mon C[oe]ur, and so on. The whole place
seemed like an assemblage of dove cotes specially planned for honeymoon
couples, and gave the oddest effect of unreality. Then we passed into
the green twilight of the great pine forest which extends all the way to
the sea.

A romantically beautiful road lay before us. For more than thirty miles
it runs straight and smooth through high aromatic pines, springing from
a carpet of bracken. Miss Randolph, I must tell you, has become an
expert driver, and at sight of the long, straight road said she would
take the wheel. So I stopped a moment, and we changed places. She put
the car at its highest speed, and we flew along the infinite perspective
of the never-ending avenue. This vast pine forest is a desert, and we
passed only through small and scattered villages. That flight through
the pine forest of the Landes will always be to me an ineffaceable
memory. None of us spoke; two of us felt, I think, that we were close to
Nature's heart. The heady, balsamic odour of the pines exhilarated us,
and the wind, playing melancholy music on the Eolian harps of their
branches, seemed like a deep accompaniment to the humming throb of the
tireless motor. As often as I dared I stole a look sideways at Miss
Randolph's profile. She sat erect, her little gauntletted hands resting
light as thistledown upon the wheel, but her fingers and her wrist
nervous and alert as a jockey riding a thoroughbre