d sharing any of the delights of life with one we love enhances them
enormously. One can easily imagine a gourmand being dissatisfied with
his wife if she resolutely refused to share any of his meals!

Now, as I gazed through the windows of the slow-moving train and saw
the long blue lines of the level-topped hills, the deep purple edges
of the vast table-lands rising against the amber or the blood red
evening skies, I longed for Viola with that inward longing of the soul
which nothing but the presence of its own companion can satisfy.

One evening, as I gazed out, the whole prairie was bathed in
rose-coloured light that appeared to ripple over it in pink waves. The
tall grass, tall as that of an English hay-field, seemed touched with
fire; far on every side stretched the open plain, absolutely level,
bounded at last in the far distance by that deep purple wall of
mountains, flat-topped, level-lined also, against the sky, the great
mesas or table-lands of Mexico.

And in this vast expanse of waving grasses and low flowering shrubs,
in the pink glow of the evening, stood out two graceful forms, a pair
of coyotes, distinct against the sunset behind them. Only these two
were visible in all that great lonely plain, and they stood together
watching the train go by, their sinuous bodies and low sweeping tails
touched and tipped with fire in the ruby light.

How delighted Viola would have been with that scene, I thought
regretfully, as the train carried us through it.

When we arrived at the City of Mexico, we drove to the Hotel Iturbide
and took a room high up on the third floor, to be well lifted out of
the suffocating atmosphere of the streets.

Suzee was a little overawed by the height of the long, narrow room
that we had assigned to us in this, at one time, palace, but when she
saw that the bed was comfortable and there was a large mirror before
which she could array and re-array herself, she was satisfied.

I saw the room would be a very difficult one to paint in, for it was
dark in spite of the tall window which opened on to an iron balcony
running across the front of the hotel.

The window was draped with thick red curtains and had a deep, handsome
cornice hanging over it.

Suzee went on to the balcony immediately and was delighted with the
incessant stream of gaily dressed people passing underneath. This was
the main street of the city. Not very wide, flanked with lofty, old,
picturesquely built houses on ea