spent your honeymoon with the
beautiful little mother whom I never knew in the Riviera and in Italy.
That is one reason why I want to see Italy--why I sent that question to
you by cable the other day. Your one journey abroad, dear, dear old Dad!
I can guess now why you have never been keen to come again, though you
have always pretended you preferred Wall Street to all Europe. Now I am
seeing these fairy-like places I know how you have wished to keep the
memory unspoiled; for they would never, never be the same if you saw
them for the second time, even with me, though you do love me dearly,
don't you? It's _first_ times that are so thrilling; and I'm having my
first times now, though they're different from yours. I don't suppose I
shall ever have such a love in my life as you had, or if I do, it will
be sad and broken. Either the man I could care for would be divided from
me by an impassable barrier, or something else horrid will happen. I
feel that. I shall never write like this again, but I can't help it
to-night. There! I won't go on about your past and my future any more;
but just about the "winged present." And, oh, its wings are of rainbows!

Elderly people I've talked to at hotels during the last few days tell me
the "Riviera is being ruined." You would say so too perhaps; but it
seems heaven to me, from Hyeres to Bordighera--as far as we've gone.
Just here I must stop and thank you for your answer to my cable and
saying "Italy by all means." If it hadn't been for that, we shouldn't be
here.

I thought that we couldn't see anything more beautiful than on the other
side of Marseilles; but the Riviera is a thing apart. I'm gratefully
glad to have come into such an enchanted land of sunshine and flowers on
an automobile instead of a stuffy train. There's nothing in the world to
equal travelling on a motor-car. You can go fast or slow; you can stop
where you like and as long as you like; with a little luggage on your
car you're as independent as a bird; and like a bird you float through
the open air, with no thought for time-tables. When will the poet come
who will sing the song of the motor-car? Maeterlinck has sung it in
prose, but the song was too short.

Of course, after that horrid affair the other side of Toulon I couldn't
let Jimmy drive any more. He realised that I distrusted him and rather
sulkily resigned the wheel, blaming the car for the accident and
declaring that it could not have happened to his Panh