ike an immense idol in a temple; and it looked as if all its life
it never had done anything else but stand in its perfection to be stared
at. And by its air of self-consciousness, of majesty, of arrogant power
in repose, you gathered that it knew it was there to be stared at. The
thing was drawn up at the far end of the garage, where no breath could
blow on it, over an open pit. You knew that Kendal, the chauffeur, went
down on a ladder into the pit to examine the secret being of the car; you
knew it and yet it was incredible. You refused to believe that an outrage
to which common cars were subject ever had been or would be perpetrated
on this holy one. You would have said that no spot of mud or dust or rain
had ever lighted on it; it might have descended into the garage out of
heaven for any sign of travel that it showed. It was surrounded by I
know not what atmosphere of consecration and immunity.

So that Norah's first question sounded like a profanity.

"What speed is it?" she said.

It might have been fancy, but I thought that Jevons's face underwent a
change. I certainly saw Kendal the chauffeur looking at it.

"Speed?" he said. "Speed? Well--you _can_ speed her up to sixty miles an
hour if you want to." (He seemed to say, "If she ever is speeded up," or
"You jolly well may want.")

He ran his hand lovingly along the car's white flank as if it were alive
and could respond to the caress.

"She's a beauty," he said.

The chauffeur looked at him again.

"You won't want to knock her about like you did the last one, Mr.
Jevons," he said.

And Jimmy's face expressed a sort of horror.

The chauffeur looked at us then, and, if you can wink without any motion
of the eyelids, he winked. He saw, and he was trying to indicate to us,
the state that Jevons had fallen into.

It was infatuation; it was idolatry; it was the most extraordinary
passion I have ever known a man otherwise sane to be possessed by. You
would have said that that creature with the black-and-white body and the
terrific bowels of machinery had some sinister and magic power over him.
He loved it; he worshipped it; he was afraid of it. And when you think of
how, as the chauffeur said, he had "served" the other car--

Knock her about, indeed! He daren't take her out of the garage for a
fifteen-mile run without agonies of apprehension. He never took her out
at all unless he was certain that it wouldn't rain and that there
wouldn't be any mud or an