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admiring audience in Carlotta's presence with a detailed
description of that young woman's physical perfectionsa
description which was marked by a singular lack of reticence.
The time of her glory is the bathing hour, when she accompanies
Carlotta from her cabin to the water's edge, divests her of
_peignoir_ and _espadrilles_, but before revealing her to
fashionable Etretat, casts a preliminary glance around, as who
should say: Prepare all men and women for the dazzling goddess I
am about to unveil. Carlotta is undoubtedly bewitching in her
bathing costume, and enjoys a little triumph of beauty. People
fall into a natural group in order to look at her, while I,
sitting on a campstool in my white ducks and pink shirt and
smoking a cigarette, cannot repress a complacent pride of
ownership. I do not object to her flicking her wet fingers at me
when she comes dripping out of the sea; and I do not even
reproach her when she puts her foot upon my sartorially
immaculate knee, to show me a pebblecut on her glistening pink
sole.
Her conduct has been exemplary. I have allowed her to make the
acquaintance of two or three young fellows, her partners at the
Casino dances, and she walks up and down the terrace with them
before meals. I have forbidden her, under penalty of immediate
return to London and of my eternal displeasure, to mention the
harem at Alexandretta. Young fellows are gifted with a genius
for misapprehension. She is an ordinary young English lady, an
orphan (which is true), and I am her guardian. Of course she
looks at them with imploring eyes, and pulls them by the sleeve,
and handles the lappels of their coats, and admits them to terms
of the frankest intimacy; but I can no more change these
characteristics than I can alter the shape of her body. She is
the born coquette. Her delighted conception of herself is that
she is the object of every man's admiration. I noticed her this
morning playing a tune with her fingers on the old bathingman's
arm, as he was preparing to take her into the water, and I saw
his mahogany face soften. In her indescribable childish way she
would coquet with a taxcollector or a ragandbone man or the
Archbishop of Canterbury. But she has committed no grave
indiscretion, and I am sufficiently her lord and master to exact
obedience.
I pretend, however, to be at her beck and call, and it is a
delight to minister to her radiant happinessto feel her lean on
my arm and hear her cooing voice say:
You are so good. I should like to kiss you.

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