ten years younger in her creamy crepe de Chine dress, with
her big straw hat, which seemed to have conquered, without an effort,
the perfection and simplicity of the absolute.

"What is it called?" he asked fingering it.

"Crepe surprise."

He asked her to describe its lines, but she refused.

"Ne parlons pas robes," she said.

They decided to go for a drive.

The cocher explained that he had lost his wife, but that "Lisette etait
un tres bon petit cheval."

They laughed--at him, at one another, at the sun, at the sea, at
everything. He told her about the convolvuluses, and she said he ought
to write a book.

He told her his name.

She puckered her forehead a little, and looked to him for help.

He explained rather stiffly that he had written three novels, a book of
short sketches, a book of light verse, and a phantasy on Algeria.

She asked what they were called. He told her.

She asked which was the best.

He said that "Sur les Rives" had the best things in it. Perhaps it was
less finished than some of the others, but it was on a bigger scale, the
conception was more interesting.

She asked what the conception was.

He told her that it was about a woman who, out of affection for her
husband, and deep intrinsical virtue, refuses to become the mistress of
the man she passionately adores. He goes away and she gives herself to
the first person she meets with a look of him. Her original great
struggle has exhausted all her powers of resistance.

Madame Marly was silent.

"It is true," she said, "for big things we have big resistances, and for
little things little resistances. And so we live our lives in small weak
lapses--not driven by hate or love, but by pique or boredom, lowering
our flag to salute a pleasure boat, not a battleship. Pouf," she made a
little gesture of disgust that he was beginning to know. "We occupy the
places that other people make for us. We curl on their divans, we sprawl
in their gutters, we sit proudly on the pedestals they put for us, we
occupy their altars, and when we are alone, what happens to us? We
dissolve into air."

"Not you," he said. "I feel it. You are so independent, so sure. Where
are your hesitations? Your very doubts are challenges to truth."

"Challenges to truth," she said. "It is a nice phrase."

Driving back into the sunset they were silent. He wrapped her cloak
round her, and once he kissed her hand, but it didn't feel as if it
belonged to her. Her t