after the coming of Victoria's
letter, the two men started in Nevill's yellow car, the merry-eyed
chauffeur charmed at the prospect of a journey worth doing. He was
tired, he remarked to Stephen, "de tous ces petits voyages d'une
demi-heure, comme les tristes promenades des enfants, sans une seule
aventure."

They had bidden good-bye to Lady MacGregor, and most of the family
animals, overnight, and it was hardly eight o'clock when they left
Djenan el Djouad, for the day's journey would be long. A magical light,
like the light in a dream, gilded the hills of the Sahel; and beyond lay
the vast plain of the Metidja, a golden bowl, heaped to its swelling rim
of mountains with the fairest fruits of Algeria.

The car rushed through a world of blossoms, fragrant open country full
of flowers, and past towns that did their small utmost to bring France
into the land which France had conquered. Boufarik, with its tall
monument to a brave French soldier who fought against tremendous odds:
Blidah, a walled and fortified mixture of garrison and orange-grove,
with a market-place like a scene in the "Arabian Nights": Orleansville,
modern and ostentatiously French, built upon ruins of vast antiquity,
and hotter than all other towns in the dry cup of the Chelif Valley:
Relizane, Perregaux, and finally Oran (famed still for its old Spanish
forts), which they reached by moonlight.

Always there were fields embroidered round the edges with wild flowers
of blue and gold, and rose. Always there were white, dusty roads, along
which other motors sometimes raced, but oftener there were farm-carts,
wagons pulled by strings of mules, and horses with horned harness like
the harness in Provence or on the Spanish border. There were huge,
two-storied diligences, too, drawn by six or eight black mules, crammed
under their canvas roofs with white- or brown-robed Arabs, and going
very fast.

From Oran they might have gone on the same night, reaching the end of
their journey after a few hours' spin, but Nevill explained that haste
would be vain. They could not see Mademoiselle Soubise until past nine,
so better sleep at Oran, start at dawn, and see something of the
road,--a road more picturesque than any they had travelled.

It was not for Stephen to offer objections, though he was in a mood
which made him long to push on without stopping, even though there were
no motive for haste. He was ashamed of the mood, however, and hardly
understood what it