“Your opportunities are limited here,” he said. “You should go to an American watering-place. There young men and maidens, old men and children, dressed and undressed, sport together with a promiscuity! You would imagine yourself by the waters of Eden.”
“Cosi?” The Elder looked up a moment. “But after all, a little formality is better—a little illusion.”
“Illusion!” cried the Younger. “In the red and white stripes so bountifully provided by the Stabilimento! I can conceive of no surer cure for love than to chain the unhappy victim to this corner and force him to behold his inamorata in the full horror of her dishabille. It would be a disillusionment which no passion could survive.”
“On the contrary,” rejoined the Elder, “you will shortly behold a vision whose like you might seek in vain beside your waters of Eden.”
The Younger laughed again.
“There is already a vision, is there? In red and white stripes? You must be worse off than usual, for this spectacle is positively indecent. It is more. It is revolting. There ought to be a law limiting public bathing to persons between the ages of—say—three and thirty-three, with special clauses excluding individuals of inadequate or intolerable dimensions!”
The Elder laughed in turn.
“That is why I am too vain to expose myself. There is an irrepressible democracy of the flesh which is fatal to the most exclusive triumphs of the tailor. But wait till you see Dulcinea.”
“Who is she this time?” inquired the Younger airily.
The Elder turned upon him a reproachful but an unoffended monocle: