mon
sense, she shouldn't have mine which I wasn't using, instead of his, which
was on his back. He _wanted_ her to wear his coat, and hang common sense!

After an instant's stupid bewilderment I saw this, and could hardly help
chuckling. How many days had he known her? Two and a bit. At Biarritz he
had given me sound advice on my affairs; couldn't understand this
fall-in-love-at-sight business; thought a girl wasn't worth a red cent
till she was twenty-two couldn't see himself being sentimental in any
circumstances; was going to wait to make his choice till he went back to
America; believed a man owed it to his own country to put his
country-women first; and anyhow couldn't stand a girl who wasn't able to
converse rationally. Yet Pilar, if she were to talk with him in his own
tongue, must perforce limit her scintillations to "Varry nice, lo-vely,
all raight"; while, if he wrestled with hers, he could scarcely go beyond
phrase-book limits.

The language of the eyes remained; but that has no place in the realm of
common sense. My overcoat was singularly unbecoming to Dick; but he beamed
with happiness in it, as he regarded Pilar cosily folded in his; and
looking on the picture, certain things occurred to me which I might say to
Dick when I got him alone. But after all, I thought I would keep them to
laugh over myself.

On this morning of biting wind and brilliant sun, there was still more
dazzle of snow to illumine the mountain tops; and though the road was
dull, the beauty of the atmospheric effects was worth coming to Spain to
see. The road we travelled and the near meadows seemed, as we went
speeding on, the only solid ground in sight; as if we had landed on an
island floating at the rate of thirty miles an hour, through a vast sea of
translucent tints that changed with the light, as an opal changes.

Forests of strangely bunchy "umbrella" pines were blots of dark green ink
splashed against the sky; and scarcely five minutes passed but we saw the
finger of an old watch-tower pointing cloudward from a hill. Sometimes our
road, dividing endless cornfields, stretched before us long and straight
for miles ahead, over switchback after switchback, as if the hills chased
each other but never succeeded in catching up. Then, when we had grown
used to such an outlook, the road would twist so suddenly that it seemed
to spring up in our faces. It would turn upon itself and writhe like a
wounded cobra, before it was able to craw