"I did not want to interrupt."
"There you had an advantage over me. I was longing to bring your remarks about the sea to an untimely end."
Her laugh was the most confidential thing in the world. You felt as if she had given you an unlimited credit of intimacy. He thought that she was looking ten years younger in her creamy crêpe 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.
"Crêpe 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 était un très 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.