thing 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 camp-stool 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
pebble-cut 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 bathing-man'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 tax-collector or a rag-and-bone 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 happiness--to feel her lean on my arm and hear
her cooing voice say:

"You are so good. I should like to kiss you."

But I do not allow her to kiss me. Never again.

"Seer Marcous, let us go to the little horses."

She has a consuming passion for _petits chevaux_. I speak sagely of the
evils of gambling. She laughs. I weakly take lower ground.

"What is the good? You have no money."

"Oh-h! But only two francs," she says, holding out her hand.

"Not one. Yesterday you lost."

"But to-day I shall win. I want to give you something I saw in a shop.
Oh, a beautiful thing." Then I feel a hand st