I was grateful.  “I can’t tell how much I thank you,” I answered.  “But I’m in no mood for companionship.  The fact is, I’m stunned for the moment, but I fancy that presently I shall find out I’m rather hard hit.”

“No, you won’t, unless you mope,” broke in Molly.  “On the contrary, you’ll feel it less every day.”

“Time will show,” said I.  “Anyhow, I must dree my own weird—­whatever that means.  I don’t know, and never heard of anyone who did, but it sounds appropriate.  I should like to do a walking tour alone in the desert, if it were not for the annoying necessity to eat and drink.  I want to get away from all the people I ever knew or heard of—­with the exceptions named.”

“One would think you were the only person disappointed in love!” exclaimed Molly.  “Why, I have a friend who has really suffered.  Dear little Mercedes——­”

Mrs. Winston stopped suddenly, drawing in her breath.  She looked startled, as if she had been on the point of betraying a state secret; then her eyes brightened; she began abstractedly to trace a leaf on the damask tablecloth.  “I have thought of just the thing for you,” she said, apparently apropos of nothing.  “Why don’t you buy or hire a mule to carry your luggage, and walk from Switzerland down into Italy, not over the high roads, but do a pass or two, and for the rest, keep to the footpaths among the mountains, which would suit your mood?”

“The mule isn’t a bad scheme,” I replied.  “A dirty man is an independent animal, but a clean man, or one whose aim is to be clean, is more or less helpless.  If he has a weakness for a sponge bag, a clean shirt or two, and evening things to change into after a long tramp, he must go hampered by a caravan of beasts.”

“One beast would do,” said Molly practically, “unless you count the muleteer, and that depends upon his disposition.”

“I suppose muleteers have dispositions,” I reflected aloud.

“Mules have.  I’ve met them in America.  But if you think my idea a bright one, reward it by going with Jack and me as far as Lucerne.  There you can pick up your mule and your mule-man.”

“‘A picker-up of unconsidered trifles,’” I quoted dreamily.  “Well, if you and Jack are willing to tool me out on your motor car as far as Lucerne, I should be an ungrateful brute to refuse.  But the difficulty is, I want to turn a sulky back on my kind at once, while you two——­”

“We’re starting on the first,” said Jack.

“What!  No Cowes?”

“We wouldn’t give a day on the car for a cycle of Cowes.”

And so the plan of my consolation tour was settled, in the supreme court beyond which there is no appeal.  But man can do no more than propose; and woman—­even American woman—­cannot invariably “dispose” to the extent of remaking the whole world of mules and men according to her whim.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER II