and one games to play at and
friends to play them with, and everything his own way, and a new
motor.... Well, but look at that now. Isn't it bare and splendid--all
clean lines--no messing and softness; it might be cut out of rock. Oh,
I like Tuscany."

They had rounded a bend, and a spacious country lay there stretched to
the morning, and over it the marvel of the dawn opened and blossomed like
a flower. From the basin of the shining river the hills stood back, and
up their steep sides the vine-hung mulberries and close-trimmed olives
climbed (olives south of the Serchio are diligently pruned, and lack the
generous luxuriance of the north), and against the silver background the
sentinel cypresses stood black, like sharp music notes striking abruptly
into a vague symphony; and among the mulberry gardens and the olives and
the cypresses white roads climbed and spiralled up to little cresting
cities that took the rosy dawn. Tuscany emerging out of the dim mystery
of night had a splendid clarity, an unblurred cleanness of line, an
austere fineness, as of a land hewn sharply out of rock.

Peter would not have that fine bareness used as illustration; it was too
good a thing in itself. Rodney the symbolist saw the vision of life in
it, Peter the joy of self-sufficient beauty.

The quiet road bore them through the hushed translucence of the
dawn-clear land. Everything was silent in this limpid hour; the little
wind that had whitened the olives and set the sea-waves whispering
there had dropped now and lay very still.

The road ran level through the river basin. Far ahead they could see it
now, a white ribbon laid beside a long golden gleam that wound and wound.

Peter sighed, seeing so much of it all at once, and stopped to rest on
the low white wall, but instead of sitting on it he swayed suddenly
forward, and the hill cities circled close about him, and darkened and
shut out the dawn.

The smell of the dust, when one was close to it, was bitter and odd.
Somewhere in the further darkness a voice was muttering mild and
perplexed imprecations. Peter moved on the strong arm that was supporting
him and opened his eyes and looked on the world again. Between him and
the rosy morning, Rodney loomed large, pouring whisky into a flask.

It all seemed a very old and often-repeated tale. One could not do
anything; one could not even go a walking-tour: one could not (of this
one was quite sure) take whisky at this juncture without