undred and twenty, but turning lefthanded this time.

And now you understand that, having nothing in the world to do--but
nothing whatever! I fell into the habit of counting my footsteps. I
would walk with Florence to the baths. And, of course, she entertained
me with her conversation. It was, as I have said, wonderful what she
could make conversation out of. She walked very lightly, and her hair
was very nicely done, and she dressed beautifully and very expensively.
Of course she had money of her own, but I shouldn't have minded. And yet
you know I can't remember a single one of her dresses. Or I can
remember just one, a very simple one of blue figured silk--a Chinese
pattern--very full in the skirts and broadening out over the shoulders.
And her hair was copper-coloured, and the heels of her shoes were
exceedingly high, so that she tripped upon the points of her toes. And
when she came to the door of the bathing place, and when it opened to
receive her, she would look back at me with a little coquettish smile,
so that her cheek appeared to be caressing her shoulder.

I seem to remember that, with that dress, she wore an immensely broad
Leghorn hat--like the Chapeau de Paille of Rubens, only very white. The
hat would be tied with a lightly knotted scarf of the same stuff as her
dress. She knew how to give value to her blue eyes. And round her neck
would be some simple pink, coral beads. And her complexion had a perfect
clearness, a perfect smoothness...

Yes, that is how I most exactly remember her, in that dress, in that
hat, looking over her shoulder at me so that the eyes flashed very
blue--dark pebble blue...

And, what the devil! For whose benefit did she do it? For that of the
bath attendant? of the passers-by? I don't know. Anyhow, it can't have
been for me, for never, in all the years of her life, never on any
possible occasion, or in any other place did she so smile to me,
mockingly, invitingly. Ah, she was a riddle; but then, all other women
are riddles. And it occurs to me that some way back I began a sentence
that I have never finished... It was about the feeling that I had when
I stood on the steps of my hotel every morning before starting out
to fetch Florence back from the bath. Natty, precise, well-brushed,
conscious of being rather small amongst the long English, the lank
Americans, the rotund Germans, and the obese Russian Jewesses, I should
stand there, tapping a cigarette on the outside of my cas