He was not a stranger in the country to which we were going, though he had never entered it by this gate, and most of his motoring had been done in France; but I knew that he would revel in visiting once more the places he loved, in his own car. "Have you ever been in Italy?" I asked the Countess, but she was evilly fascinated by a dog which seemed bent on committing suicide under our car, and it was Beechy who answered. "We've never been _anywhere_ before, any of us," she said. "Mamma and I only had our machinery set running a few months ago, but now we _are_ wound up, goodness knows how far we'll get. As for Maida--she's no mechanical doll like us. But do you know the play about the statue that came to life?" "Galatea?" I suggested. "Yes, that's the name. Maida's like that; and I suppose she'll go back as soon as she can, and ask to be turned into a statue again." "What do you mean?" I ventured to inquire; for these hints of the child's about her cousin were gradually consuming me to a grey ash with curiosity. "I can't tell you what _I_ mean, because I promised I wouldn't. But that's what _Maida_ means." "What she means?" "Yes, to go back and be turned into a statue, forever and ever." I ought to have been glad that the girl destined herself for a colder fate than a union with a happy-go-lucky Irishman as poor as herself, but somehow I was not glad. Watching the light glint on a tendril of spun gold which had blown out from the motor-hood, I could not wish her young heart to be turned to marble in that mysterious future to which Beechy Kidder hinted she was self-destined. "Perhaps I'd better make love to her myself," was the suggestion that flashed into my mind; but innate canniness sturdily pushed it out again. With my seven hundred a year, and _The Riviera Sun_ only just beginning to shed a few golden beams, I could not afford to take a penniless beauty off Terry's hands, even to save him from a disastrous marriage or her from the fate of Galatea. Yet what a day it was in which to live and love, and motor over perfect roads through that radiant summer-land which the Ligurians loved, the Romans conquered, and the modern world comes from afar to see.