ppy noisiness of a good conscience and
perfect health. In her hands the opening of a door became an air-raid
and yet what could you do, confronted with her rosy face beaming with a
child-like confidence in giving pleasure and satisfaction.

No, it was entirely his own fault. Everything was what he might have
expected. The sea was just where he had been told it would be, the air
was relentlessly bracing, the cleanliness of the Hotel Bungalow reminded
you of a shiny soaped face which had never known powder. It was all, he
reflected, quite horrible. The salt-laden wind blowing the sand up from
the dunes, the hard bright sunshine, the effect everything gave you of
having been painted with the six colours of a child's rather cheap
paint-box.

"A different man," she had said he would feel. Well he felt it
already--the lassitude of his body feebly revolting against the
impending bracing, his eyes watering at the glare. Health and
inspiration, Marthe had said, dreamless sleep, an insatiable appetite
and perfect peace in which to finish his novel. "Think how quiet it will
be," she had said. As if the country were ever quiet, crowded as it was
with locos and dogs and sabots. Surely peace meant Paris in August, with
every one away, thick carpets and a noiseless valet.

Maurice imagined himself merging into a huge armchair, just able to see
a square glass vase of Juliette roses--gilt petals lined with deep pink
velvet. Why on earth were there never any flowers in the country? And no
one would disturb him--no one. Privacy is only possible in a big town.
Every detail of life in the Hotel Bungalow was revealed to him in a
series of sights, sounds and smells. And should a fellow lunatic arrive,
how was he to avoid him? At every meal there would be little exchanges
of the banal, after dinner a game of billiards--even possibly, horror of
horrors, potential excursions planned with zest and good fellowship. And
all the time he would be saying "No," more and more ungraciously, or,
worse still--and far more likely--saying "yes."

And then where would his novel be? Not that it was possible any way to
write in a place where the sun was always in your eyes, the wind blew
your paper away and creaking boards made sitting in your bedroom out of
the question.

Marthe was a fool, given up entirely to hygiene and plans for other
people. "You will come back bubbling over with physical fitness, your
dear face all tanned," she had said. "Dear" inde