nt.

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
insinuating charm of gesture, voice and smile, all the coquettish airs
in short displayed on this sea-shore, 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, hunted them like game, coy and furtive notwithstanding
that it seemed so near and so easy to capture. This wide shore was,
then, no more than a love-market--some drove a hard bargain for their
kisses while others only promised them. And he reflected that it was
everywhere the same, all the world over.

His mother had done what others did--that was all. Others? No. For
there were exceptions--many, very many. 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 visitors gradually
landward. He saw the various groups jump up and fly, carrying their
chairs with them, before the yellow waves as they rolled up edged with
a lacelike frill of foam. The bathing-machines too were being pulled
up by horses, and along the planked way which formed the promenade
running along the shore from end to end, there was now an increasing
flow, slow and dense, of well-dressed people in two opposite streams
elbowing and mingling. Pierre, made nervous and exasperated by this
bustle, made his escape into the town, and went to get his breakfast
at a modest tavern on the skirts of the fields.

When he had finished with coffee, he stretched his legs on a couple
of chairs under a lime tree in front of