“Your ladyship’s hair will get wet.”

“Then you can powder it.  Nothing is better for drying than powder.  And so, I shall wear my light blue dress this evening; blond powder will go with it exactly.  My child, you are becoming foolish.  I told you to shorten my bathing costume, by taking it up at the knees.  Just see what it looks like!”

“I was fearful that your ladyship would find it too tight for swimming.”

“Tight!  Then why have you taken it in three good inches just here?  See how it wrinkles up; it is ridiculous, don’t you see it, my girl, don’t you see it?”

The sides of the tent were moved; and I guessed that my cousin was somewhat impatiently assuming the costume in question, in order the better to point out its defects to her maid.

“I don’t want to look as if I were wound up in a sheet, but yet I want to be left freedom of action.  You can not get it into your head, Julie, that this material will not stretch.  You see now that I stoop a little-Ah! you see it at last, that’s well.”

Weak minds!  Is it not true, my pious friend, that there are those who can be absorbed by such small matters?  I find these preoccupations to be so frivolous that I was pained at being even the involuntary recipient of them, and I splashed the water with my hands to announce my presence and put a stop to a conversation which shocked me.

“I am coming to you, Robert; get into the water.  Has your sister arrived yet?” said my cousin, raising her voice; then softly, and addressing her maid, she added:  “Yes, of course, lace it tightly.  I want support.”

One side of the tent was raised, and my relative appeared.  I know not why I shuddered, as if at the approach of some danger.  She advanced two or three steps on the fine sand, drawing from her fingers as she did so, the gold rings she was accustomed to wear; then she stopped, handed them to Julie, and, with a movement which I can see now, but which it is impossible for me to describe to you, kicked off into the grass the slippers, with red bows, which enveloped her feet.

She had only taken three paces, but it sufficed to enable me to remark the singularity of her gait.  She walked with short, timid steps, her bare arms close to her sides.

She had divested herself of all the outward tokens of a woman, save the tresses of her hair, which were rolled up in a net.  As for the rest, she was a comical-looking young man, at once slender yet afflicted by an unnatural plumpness, one of those beings who appear to us in dreams, and in the delirium of fever, one of those creatures toward whom an unknown power attracts us, and who resemble angels too nearly not to be demons.

“Well, Robert, of what are you thinking?  Give me your hand and help me to get into the water.”

She dipped the toes of her arched foot into the pellucid stream.

“This always gives one a little shock, but the water ought to be delightful to-day,” said she.  “But what is the matter with you?—­your hand shakes.  You are a chilly mortal, cousin.”