“And the dust.  It does not too much annoy you?”

(Oh, bother, I do wish he’d let me alone!)

“No, monsieur.  Because there are compensations.  The scenery, is it not?”

“And for me your society.” (What a little idiot she is!)

And so on.  And so on.  Oh yes, there were consolations in being a motor maid, sitting as far away as possible from a cross-looking if rather handsome chauffeur, who would want to bite her if she tried to do the “society act.”

But after a while, when we’d spun past the charming villas and attractive shops of Cannes (which looks so deceitfully sylvan, and is one of the gayest watering-places in the world) silence began to be a burden.

It is such a nice motor car, and I did want to ask intelligent questions about it!

I was almost sure they would be intelligent, because already I know several things about automobiles.  The Milvaines haven’t got one, but most of their friends in Paris have, and though I’ve never been on a long tour before, I’ve done some running about.  When one knows things, especially when one’s a girl—­a really well-regulated, normal girl—­one does like to let other people know that one knows them.  It’s all well enough to cram yourself full to bursting with interesting facts which it gives you a vast amount of trouble to learn, just out of respect for your own soul; and there’s a great deal in that point of view, in one’s noblest moments; but one’s noblest moments are like bubbles, radiant while they last, then going pop! quite to one’s own surprise, leaving one all flat, and nothing to show for the late bubble except a little commonplace soap.

Well, I am like that, and when I’m not nobly bubbling I love to say what I’m thinking to somebody who will understand, instead of feeding on myself.

It really was a waste of good material to see all that lovely scenery slipping by like a panorama, and to be having quite heavenly thoughts about it, which must slip away too, and be lost for ever.  I got to the pass when it would have been a relief to be asked if “this were my first visit to the Riviera;” because I could hastily have said “Yes,” and then broken out with a volley of impressions.

Seeing beautiful things when you travel by rail consists mostly on getting half a glimpse, beginning to exclaim, “Oh, look there!” then plunging into the black gulf of a tunnel, and not coming out again until after the best bit has carefully disappeared behind an uninteresting, fat-bodied mountain.  But travelling by motor-car!  Oh, the difference!  One sees, one feels; one is never, never bored, or impatient to arrive anywhere.  One would enjoy being like the famous brook, and “go on forever.”