I presently felt that this landscape was not, after all, doing itself full justice. Was it not rushing rather too quickly past? "James!" said a shrill, faint voice from behind, and gradually--"Oh, darling Mother, really!" protested another voice--the landscape slackened pace. But after a while, little by little, the landscape lost patience, forgot its good manners, and flew faster and faster than before. The road rushed furiously beneath us, like a river in spate. Avenues of poplars flashed past us, every tree of them on each side hissing and swishing angrily in the draft we made. Motors going Rouen-ward seemed to be past as quickly as motors that bore down on us. Hardly had I espied in the landscape ahead a chateau or other object of interest before I was craning my neck round for a final glimpse of it as it faded on the backward horizon. An endless uphill road was breasted and crested in a twinkling and transformed into a decline near the end of which our car leaped straight across to the opposite ascent, and--"James!" again, and again by degrees the laws of nature were reestablished, but again by degrees revoked. I did not doubt that speed in itself was no danger; but, when the road was about to make a sharp curve, why shouldn't Pethel, just as a matter of form, slow down slightly, and sound a note or two of the hooter? Suppose another car were--well, that was all right: the road was clear; but at the next turning, when our car neither slackened nor hooted and WAS for an instant full on the wrong side of the road, I had within me a contraction which (at thought of what must have been if--) lasted though all was well. Loath to betray fear, I hadn't turned my face to Pethel. Eyes front! And how about that wagon ahead, huge hay-wagon plodding with its back to us, seeming to occupy whole road? Surely Pethel would slacken, hoot. No. Imagine a needle threaded with one swift gesture from afar. Even so was it that we shot, between wagon and road's-edge, through; whereon, confronting us within a few yards--inches now, but we swerved--was a cart that incredibly we grazed not as we rushed on, on. Now indeed I had turned my eyes on Pethel's profile; and my eyes saw there that which stilled, with a greater emotion, all fear and wonder in me.