now," said Adele.

"What?" said Berry.

My wife smiled.

"He'd 've made tracks for Spain," she said.

* * * * *

The French sergeant saluted, Daphne nodded, Berry said, "Down with
everything," I touched my hat, and we rolled slowly over the little
bridge out of one country into another.

Our reception was very serious.

So far as our papers were concerned, the Spanish N.C.O. knew his job
and did it with a soldierly, if somewhat trying, precision. Pong was
diligently compared with the tale of his _triptyque_. Our faces were
respectively compared with the unflattering vignettes pasted upon our
passports. The visas were deliberately inspected. Our certificates
were unfolded and scrutinised. Our travelling pass was digested. To
our great relief, however, he let the luggage go. We had no
contraband, but we were two hours late, and to displace and replace
securely a trunk and a dressing-case upon the back of a coupe takes
several minutes and necessitates considerable exertion of a very
unpleasant kind. Finally, having purchased a local permit for five
pesetas, we were suffered to proceed.

We were now at the mouth of a gorge and the pass was before us. Had
the gorge been a rift in the range, a road had been cut by the side of
the torrent, and our way, if tortuous, had been as flat as your hand.
But the gorge was a _cul de sac_--a beautiful blind alley, with
mountains' flanks for walls. So the road had been made to scale one
side of the alley--to make its winding way as best it could, turning
and twisting and doubling upon itself, up to a windy saddle which we
could hardly see.

I gave the car its head, and we went at a wicked hill as a bull at a
gate.

Almost immediately the scenery became superb.

With every yard the walls of the gorge were drawing further apart,
slowly revealing themselves in all their glory. Forests and
waterfalls, precipices and greenswards, grey lichened crags and
sun-bathed terraces, up, above all, an exquisite vesture of snow,
flawless and dazzling--these stood for beauty. All the wonder of
height, the towering proportions of the place, the bewildering pitch of
the sky--these stood for grandeur. An infinite serenity, an
imperturbable peace, a silence which the faint gush of springs served
to enrich--these stood for majesty. Nature has throne-rooms about the
world, and this was one of them.

I started the engine again--for we had instinctively sto