us din, mingling
with the unheeding breeze, and breathed with the air itself.

Pierre walked among all this throng, more lost, more remote from them,
more isolated, more drowned in his torturing thoughts, than if he had
been flung overboard from the deck of a ship a hundred miles from shore.
He passed by them and heard a few sentences without listening; and he
saw, without looking, how the men spoke to the women, and the women
smiled at the men. Then, suddenly, as if he had awoke, he perceived them
all; and hatred of them all surged up in his soul, for they seemed happy
and content.

Now, as he went, he studied the groups, wandering round them full of a
fresh set of ideas. All these many-hued dresses which covered the sands
like nosegays, these pretty stuffs, those showy parasols, the fictitious
grace of tightened waists, all the ingenious devices of fashion from
the smart little shoe to the extravagant hat, the seductive charm of
gesture, voice, and smile, all the coquettish airs in short displayed
on this seashore, suddenly struck him as stupendous efflorescences
of female depravity. All these bedizened women aimed at pleasing,
bewitching, and deluding some man. They had dressed themselves out for
men--for all men--all excepting the husband whom they no longer needed
to conquer. They had dressed themselves out for the lover of yesterday
and the lover of to-morrow, for the stranger they might meet and notice
or were perhaps on the lookout for.

And these men sitting close to them, eye to eye and mouth to mouth,
invited them, desired them, hunted them like game, coy and elusive
notwithstanding that it seemed so near and so easy to capture. This wide
shore was, then, no more than a love-market where some sold, others
gave themselves--some drove a hard bargain for their kisses while others
promised them for love. All these women thought only of one thing, to
make their bodies desirable--bodies already given, sold, or promised
to other men. And he reflected that it was everywhere the same, all the
world over.

His mother had done what others did--that was all. Others? These women
he saw about him, rich, giddy, love-seeking, belonged on the whole to
the class of fashionable and showy women of the world, some indeed to
the less respectable sisterhood, for on these sands, trampled by the
legion of idlers, the tribe of virtuous, home-keeping women were not to
be seen.

The tide was rising, driving the foremost rank of vi