"Nothing better. I wish you the best of luck. And I think you're doing the wisest possible thing."
"I'm glad you do." He looked at her gratefully. "Did you suspect anything?"
"Not a thing."
"Then I don't believe any one does.... Good-by, Aunt Selina."
"You've done me a great honor. Good-by, dear."
They kissed again and he went out, feeling greatly strengthened and encouraged. As he drove down to the station he determined to go to a hotel in New York and keep out of the way of the James Wimbournes and all other possible confidants. The interview with Aunt Selina had been so perfect that he could not bear the thought of risking anti-climaxes to it. Suddenly he remembered that certain Cunard and White Star boats sailed to the Mediterranean from Boston. He could go directly there and wait for a steamer in perfect security.
So he took the next train to Boston and that very afternoon engaged passage to Gibraltar on a steamer sailing two days later. The interval he spent chiefly in laying up a great store of books on Spain and Portugal, which countries he planned to visit in extenso.
The dull, wet voyage he found enchanting when brightened up by the glowing pages of Lope de Vega, Calderon, "Don Quixote," "The Lusiads," "The Bible in Spain," and Lea's "History of the Inquisition," a galaxy further enhanced by the businesslike promises of guide books and numerous works on Hispanic architecture and painting. He landed at Gibraltar with something almost approaching regret at the thought that land traveling would allow him less time for reading.
In leisurely fashion he strolled through southern Spain and Portugal, presently reaching Santiago de Compostela. It had been his intention, when this part of the trip was finished, to go to Biarritz and from there work on through the towns of southern France, but a traveling Englishman told him that he ought on no account to miss seeing the cathedral of Gerona. So he changed his plans and proceeded eastward. When he reached Gerona he called himself a fool for having so nearly missed it, but after a week or ten days among the huge dark churches of Catalonia he suddenly sickened of sight-seeing and that very night caught a through express from Barcelona to Paris.
Harry had never known Paris well enough to care for it particularly, but just now there was something rather attractive to him in its late June gaiety. He arrived there just at the time of the Grand Prix, and as he strolled, lonely and unnoticed, through the brilliant Longchamps crowd he felt his heart unaccountably warming to these well-groomed children of the world. He had been outside the realm of social intercourse so long that he felt a sudden desire for converse with smart, cheerful, people of their type.