He laid her on the sofa, took off her hat, and loosened her dress, until gradually she became coherent.
"He tried to kiss me," she sobbed.
"Who did?" her husband asked.
"The Vicomte de Brie."
"Damned little monkey," cried Geoffrey, "I'll break every miserable bone in his pretence of a body."
"Oh, no, no," protested Asako, "let us go away from here at once. Let us go to Switzerland, anywhere."
The serpent had got into the garden, but he had not been a very adroit reptile. He had shown his fangs; and the woman had promptly bruised his head and had given him an eye like an Impressionist sunset, which for several days he had to hide from the ridicule of his friends.
But Asako too had been grievously injured in the innocence of her heart; and it took all the snow winds of the Engadine to blow away from her face the hot defilement of the man's breath. She clung closely to her husband's protection. She, who had hitherto abandoned herself to excessive amiability, barbed the walls of their violated paradise with the broken glass of bare civility. Every man became suspect, the German professors culling Alpine plants, the mountain maniacs with their eyes fixed on peaks to conquer. She had no word for any of them. Even the manlike womenfolk, who golfed and rowed and clambered, were to her indignant eyes dangerous panders to the lusts of men, disguised allies of Madame Cythère.
"Are they all bad?" she asked Geoffrey.
"No, little girl, I don't suppose so. They look too dismal to be bad."