Marie Aimee was putting a pot with one red geranium in it on his writing table.  It was, she explained, still very early in the season but Monsieur must not be discouraged.  Later it became very gay with dancing and Japanese lanterns in the garden.  The Hotel Bungalow would be quite full, whereas now there was only Monsieur and a lady.

“A lady?”

“But yes, Monsieur.”

“A young lady?”

“A lady of a certain age.”

Maurice hoped that it would be an uncertain age.  Of course every one over twenty would seem old to Marie Aimee.  Probably the lady was on that exquisite frontier line, the early thirties, when the bud is already unfurling its petals, angles have softened into curves, and the significant is stirring in everything like a quickening child.  Thirty, the age of delicate response, of subtle tasting, divorced equally from the ignorant impetuosity of youth and the desperate clutchings of middle age.  How he disliked young girls with their sunburn, their manly strides, their meaningless giggles, their eternal nicknames!  And, over their heads, a warning and a trade mark, that sword of Damocles—­marriage.

Maurice was feeling a little happier.  As he walked into lunch he felt a real twinge of curiosity.  Ridiculous it was—­why he was getting quite romantic, imagining an exquisite creature on a holiday from her husband.  That was no doubt the result of the Hotel Bungalow.  On the velvet lawn with the cedar, the rose garden, the sun dial and the iced lemonade, he would have been enjoying to the full his usual ironic detachment, but St. Jean-les-Flots would throw any one to romance.

He walked into the dining room.  At the far end with her back to him sat the lady.  She wore a white coat embroidered with black, a white skirt, a white hat with a white lace veil.  On the chair beside her lay a Holland sunshade lined with green.  It was he thought, deplorable, and indicated yellow spectacles.  Her feet were very small and gave you the impression of an insecure foundation to her body.  Her back was broad.  She was certainly over forty.  Forty, thought Maurice, the dangerous age—­the desperate age.  From forty to fifty, the flower in full bloom, the period of engulfing passions, of urgent transitory satisfactions.  For how many women must it not be a ten years’ death struggle.

“What a place,” Maurice was disgusted; “it is driving me to melodrama.”

The lady got up with a certain waddling stateliness (perhaps after all she was fifty).  Her clothes fell into perfection—­she walked slowly and calmly with appraising steps.  The lace veil was over her face.  She did not forget her sunshade, her bag, or her handkerchief.  Louis, the waiter, opened the door for her.  She sailed out like a gondola on the stage, or Lohengrin’s swan.  Her movements gave an effect of invisible wheels.