Rapid motion through space elates one; so does notoriety; so does the possession of money.  These were three good reasons for Jimmy’s excitement.  He had been seen by many of his friends that day in the company of these Continentals.  At the control Segouin had presented him to one of the French competitors and, in answer to his confused murmur of compliment, the swarthy face of the driver had disclosed a line of shining white teeth.  It was pleasant after that honour to return to the profane world of spectators amid nudges and significant looks.  Then as to money—­he really had a great sum under his control.  Segouin, perhaps, would not think it a great sum but Jimmy who, in spite of temporary errors, was at heart the inheritor of solid instincts knew well with what difficulty it had been got together.  This knowledge had previously kept his bills within the limits of reasonable recklessness, and if he had been so conscious of the labour latent in money when there had been question merely of some freak of the higher intelligence, how much more so now when he was about to stake the greater part of his substance!  It was a serious thing for him.

Of course, the investment was a good one and Segouin had managed to give the impression that it was by a favour of friendship the mite of Irish money was to be included in the capital of the concern.  Jimmy had a respect for his father’s shrewdness in business matters and in this case it had been his father who had first suggested the investment; money to be made in the motor business, pots of money.  Moreover Segouin had the unmistakable air of wealth.  Jimmy set out to translate into days’ work that lordly car in which he sat.  How smoothly it ran.  In what style they had come careering along the country roads!  The journey laid a magical finger on the genuine pulse of life and gallantly the machinery of human nerves strove to answer the bounding courses of the swift blue animal.

They drove down Dame Street.  The street was busy with unusual traffic, loud with the horns of motorists and the gongs of impatient tram-drivers.  Near the Bank Segouin drew up and Jimmy and his friend alighted.  A little knot of people collected on the footpath to pay homage to the snorting motor.  The party was to dine together that evening in Segouin’s hotel and, meanwhile, Jimmy and his friend, who was staying with him, were to go home to dress.  The car steered out slowly for Grafton Street while the two young men pushed their way through the knot of gazers.  They walked northward with a curious feeling of disappointment in the exercise, while the city hung its pale globes of light above them in a haze of summer evening.

In Jimmy’s house this dinner had been pronounced an occasion.  A certain pride mingled with his parents’ trepidation, a certain eagerness, also, to play fast and loose for the names of great foreign cities have at least this virtue.  Jimmy, too, looked very well when he was dressed and, as he stood in the hall giving a last equation to the bows of his dress tie, his father may have felt even commercially satisfied at having secured for his son qualities often unpurchaseable.  His father, therefore, was unusually friendly with Villona and his manner expressed a real respect for foreign accomplishments; but this subtlety of his host was probably lost upon the Hungarian, who was beginning to have a sharp desire for his dinner.