reluctantly admitted, "I looked it up in the garage. That's why I was so late in coming round to the hotel."

I didn't speak.

"We've covered this road now for thirty miles. It's all like this, just towns and road and sea. Think of that race and of those giant cars. Just think."

And I was thinking, but not of the race of motors. It had occurred to me that John had quite forgotten Mrs. Baring, which was a pleasant thought, but I dared not let it linger; like a true lady featherweight, I must be fair and square.

"But Mrs. Baring, John," I nobly urged, "she's got the start of us by two good hours at least. She and her party She and her party will expect us on to Nice to-night."

His reply was long in coming, but it was well worth while.

"I never gave my word we'd come. It won't affect her plans. I want to be with her, of course, she's fine, but, Peg," his tone was pleading, "a woman's not the Alps."

I rippled gloriously. (That sounds like Henry James.) "Of course she's not," I said. "You're right, John, after all, we will go over the Mt. Cenis.' "And dear John thanked me humbly.

Savona was a town of factories and wharfs, and a pleasant open space where the ristorante stood, and underneath its colonnades we had our déjeuner. I had fresh lobster, very good and very cheap, but John ate maps and drank race notes. The run to Turin was one hundred thirty miles. His plan was to put the car in a garage upon arrival for a good going over, then sleep through Saturday, and at midnight make the start, that we might reach the summit before the barriers were up. John said we would probably find companions on the way. We did. Waste places in Italy are rare.

The road on to Turin offered no great obstacles. There were steep grades, of course, and John became quite peevish when I chose for my evening hymn "Over the hills to the poor house"; but he need not have been so sensitive, we "ate them up," just as we "bit the dust." I never had such large bites of a commodity before. As a rule, it lingers in the rear to inflict those poorer in horsepower if not in expletives.

As we neared the end of the run, the darkness of the night was made thicker by this dust that the soft wind swept about us, but the direction of Turin was

unmistakable, for we were not alone save for the sense of isolation that one feels in a country that is unknown to him. We found companions on the way, if there is companionship in the sound of a deep horn in the far distance, accompanied almost instantaneously by a terrific rush of wheels and more blinding dust as some great motor pounded past us to Turin. From all the country roads they came pell mell into the city, we, feeling our unaccustomed way, were left behind as recklessly they crossed and crisscrossed one another or bored in upon their rivals with loud laughter. John stood it just as long as I thought he would.

"See here," he finally exclaimed, "I must get into this. What do they think this car I'm driving is? A wayside. bench?" And he opened up the throttle.

Prudence and satisfaction strove for mastery with me. I understood their lack of fear. To the man inside the car that element becomes a tiny part of him before he has motored many miles. The very bigness and the power of the machine that carries him along gives to him a feeling of security. What keeps the man inside within the bounds of law and order is the fear of what happens to the man outside, and when there is no man outside to reckon with, then-John opens up the throttle. I thought as he joined in the general scrimmage and swung past one large car, to be halted by another crossing us, what Miss Grey had once said, that the only hope for the pedestrian was to let these cars exterminate each other, or give them more time, when each would exterminate itself, and as the thought passed through my mind, out of the dust strong in the light of the first city electric pole flashed a big car with the glitter of a uniform deep in the tonneau, and a laughing driver, who was steering with one hand as he waved the other in the air.

Five seconds afterwards, out of the blinding dust ahead of us, came a great crash, a great cry, a great silence. Then the sudden set of brakes was heard from the cars that were near the dreadful spot quickly, like a military order-the grinding of the wheels, and the warning call raised for those in the rear of "Accidente, accidente!" The pall of dust

rose slowly, and by a pillar of stone that marked the way lay the wrecked motor of the laughing driver.

The bodies had been thrown an unbelievable distance. They lay quite still, the three, face downward, flung to death. I think that John got out; I know I did not move. I watched. It was too big a thing for any feeling that I could possibly display. I simply watched. Some woman in a car near by began to shriek. "Ah, Dio! Dio! Dio!" shrieked the woman. Her voice added to the general confusion that had followed on the silence and the lifting up of the dust curtain. The bodies were turned over, and there was a demand for a dittore. It was taken up by all the crowd, "Si, si, dittore," was the cry. But there was no response, and nothing done beyond the idle pulling about of the bodies. The officer's gold braid shone brightly. I couldn't see his face. John said that the delay could not have been two minutes. Perhaps so. The true measuring of time should be by circumstance.

I only know a man, young, blond, leaped from a great grey motor that had shot from out the city, and with the help of John had lifted the poor officer, who was limply dead, and the other two, who bore faint signs of a life expiring, into the big grey motor and whirled back into the town. When a general is needed, a general will be found. A cordon of bersilieri, the patrollers of the roads, came swiftly down the street. The splintered car was guarded for the night. The knots of haggard motorists broke up and turned each to his separate motor. The engines pounding angrily at their repression were released, and the autos raced, raced, mind you, on into the city.

When John came back from the garage and found me in my room, he held a telegram.

"I wired from Savona," he announced; "it's quite all right. We'll meet again at Aix."

"Who will?”