He looked me up and down distrustfully and then let me look at it from a distance.
It was my letter—the announcement of my arrival, which followed it by a night, instead of preceding it by a day!
This untoward circumstance absolved my uncle and drove away my rancour.
“Get in,” I said. “You shall show me the way and then ... we shall have a talk!”
The car set off in the freshness of the morning.
A mist was just melting away, as if the sun after whitening the dark had still to dissolve it, and as if this faint fog, now almost nothing, were a portion of the darkness remaining in the form of vapor, an evanescent remainder of the night within the day, the vanishing specter of a vanished phantom.
CHAPTER II
AMONG THE SPHINXES
The car slowly wound its way among the twists and turns of the labyrinth. Sometimes in presence of a cluster of roads the postman himself hesitated for a moment.