"Can I help you?" she asked.
The man standing beside the motor-cycle was a young man, slim, dark, and of a pleasant countenance. He took off his helmet and bowed politely.
"Madame, I am looking for Dijon," he said in a harsh accent which struck Frobisher as somehow familiar to his ears.
"Monsieur, you can see the tip of it through that gap across the valley," Betty returned. In the very centre of the cleft the point of the soaring spire of the cathedral stood up like a delicate lance. "But I warn you that that way, though short, is not good."
Through the gradually thinning cloud of dust which hung behind the car they heard the jug-jug of another motor-cycle.
"The road by which we have come is the better one," she continued.
"But how far is it?" the young man asked.
Betty once more consulted her speedometer.
"Forty kilometres, and we have covered them in forty minutes, so that you can see the going is good. We started at eleven punctually, and it is now twenty minutes to twelve."
"Surely we started before eleven?" Jim interposed.