pended, like Mahomet's
coffin, between earth and heaven, or, at least, between mass and class,
and which stretches out its tentacles and sucks nourishment from both.
These with a regularity almost religious, spent an hour of every day,
weather permitting, splashing in the gentle surf or posing on the beach
in costumes more or less revealing, according to the contour of the
wearer. The climax of the afternoon, the coup-de-theatre which all
awaited, was the appearance of Mlle. Paul, late of the Varietes. This
was such a masterpiece in its way that it is worth pausing a moment to
describe.

Suddenly the door of her bathing-machine, which has been drawn just to
the water's edge, is flung open, and she appears on the threshold,
wrapped in a white sheet with a red border, producing a toga-like effect
not ungraceful. She hesitates an instant, and casts a startled glance
over the crowd of onlookers, then trips modestly down the steps. With a
little frisson, she casts the sheet from her and stands revealed--well,
perhaps not quite as Eve was to Adam, but so nearly so that the
difference is scarcely worth remarking. She glances down at her shapely
legs and then again at the entranced spectators.

"C'est convenable, j'espere hein?" she murmurs, and her bald-headed
cicisbeo, who has taken possession of her sheet, hastens to assure her
that all is well.

Whereupon, her doubts thus happily set at rest, she wades out to the
diving-board, mounts it leisurely, stands poised for an instant at the
outermost end, and then dives gracefully into the expectant billows.
This she does at intervals for perhaps an hour, the supreme instant for
the onlookers being that in which her glowing body, shimmering white
through its single clinging garment, is outlined in mid-air against the
sky. But finally Mademoiselle grows weary and returns to her machine,
where the gallant and attentive gentleman previously referred to
patiently awaits her--deus ex machina in more senses than one! The other
bathers gradually disappear and the crowd melts imperceptibly away. The
show is over.

But though all this was no doubt sufficiently diverting, Weet-sur-Mer
was never gloriously, aggressively awake until the sun went down. The
diversions of the day depended wholly upon the weather--a dash of rain,
a wind from the north, and, pouf! they were not thought of.

Not so the festivities of the night. Nothing short of an earthquake
could interfere with them. It was f