An English girl had come out. Her bathing-suit was drab-colored and baggy. Sagging about her knees hung an ugly skirt. In her clothes she might have been pretty; but now she was awkward and embarrassed. Her manner called attention to the fact that she was more sparsely clad than usual. She wore tight round her forehead a wretched waterproof cap.
“There’s Miss England,” laughed Fiesole.
“When we bathe, you be Miss Italy,” I laughed back.
And she was.
When I look back to that sunny July afternoon with the blue and silver Adriatic singing against the lips of the land, the warm wind blowing toward the shore from Egypt’s way, the daring flashing of slim white bodies tossed high by glistening waves, and the undercurrent merriment of laughter and secret love-making, I know that I had ventured as far as is safe into the garden which knows no barriers. It is as I saw her then that I like to remember Fiesole. I can see her coming down the golden sands, with a tress of her gold-red hair, that had escaped, lying shining between her breasts. I recall her astonishing girlishness, which she had hidden from me so long. Like a wild thing of the woods, she came to me at last, timid in her daring, halting to glance back at the green covert, advancing again with glad shy gestures. Whatever had gone before was gallant make-belief. Without a word spoken, as her eyes met mine she told me all at the water’s edge.
That afternoon I learnt the absurd delirium that may overtake a man who is owned in public by a pretty woman. She was the prettiest woman in Italy that day from her small pink feet to her golden crown. And she knew it. She treated me as though I was hers and, forgetting everything, I was glad of it. I can still thrill with the boyish pride I felt when I fastened her dress, with all the beach watching. Whatever she asked me to do was a delightful form of flattery. It pleased me to know that others were suffering the same pangs of envy that I had felt. They were saying to themselves, “How charming she is! What a lucky fellow! That’s what youth can do for you. I wonder whether they’re married.”
Tucking her arm under mine with a delicious sense of proprietorship, we set out with the crowd through the tropic growth of flowers to the pier from where the steamer started. A little way ahead I saw the blond giant with his gay little sweetheart. He was all care of her. She fluttered about him like a blue butterfly about a tall sunflower. She looked up into his face, making impertinent grimaces. He nodded his head and laughed down.
Was it only the spirit of imitation that caused us to copy them? They gave us a glimpse into the tender lovers’ world, which we both were sick with longing to enter. If Fiesole was playing a part she played it well. Her cheeks flushed and her eyes were brilliant. She made me feel the same bewilderment of gladness I had felt all those years ago, as a boy at the Red House. How much it would have meant to me then if she had treated me as she did now!
We crossed the bay towards the hour of sunset. Venice swooned in a golden haze. Clouds struck sparks from the burning disk, like hammers falling on a glowing anvil. The lagoon stared at the sky without a quiver. We traveled a pathway of molten fire.
“We must live this day out,” I said as we landed. “Let’s go to the Bauer-Grunwald to-night.”