The girl did not comprehend even yet, though she was trembling and flushing under his eyes.
She had raised her round knees and parted them in order to bury her small white feet in the sand when he had too openly admired the toes. Her lithe, well-fleshed, and adorably formed body was encased as in a second skin by the taut garment, whose scantiness was emphasized by the position she had thoughtlessly assumed.
Stricken mute, bewildered by his sudden excitement, she would have lowered her knees and rolled upon her face. But he stayed her with a gentle hand and voice, taking himself under control.
“Lie just as you are, Maro,” he said, “while I itemize for you your offences against the tranquility of a hitherto pure mind, while I show you that you are just a darling white serpent in this Eden, preaching Victorianism but a living, breathing, lovely temptation yourself.”
“Do, please, Stanley, not be that way!” quavered the uncomprehending Marion-beginning, nevertheless, to understand and to blush furiously. “I should never have worn this thing, I realize now. I did tell Mildred so but she said I was a nincompoop and that I mustn’t be so ridiculously modest, especially when I was going to bathe with my brother-in-law.”
“Mildred shall have a case of champagne and five pounds of chocolates,” observed the lady’s husband. “And if she were here this minute she should have something which she would prize much more than those gifts. No, don’t you stir until I have enumerated your faults and my grievances.
“Item: I can see the lower curves of two white and very tempting girlish buttocks emerging from the tense silk of that suit as you lie that way. No-don’t you dare move until I am through I swear to God!
“Item: breasts that would make even an anchorite mad with desire, almost worse than naked under my eyes. They seem so hard and firm that not even the straining blue silk can flatten them. And it fails utterly, when you lie thus, to do more than film over the whiteness of the lovely heaps and the roses of the little nipples.”