Ambrose Bierce.
Jean wore a light green robe, for breakfast, and it was difficult for me to take my eyes away from her.
"I'm not usually this informal at mixed breakfasts," she told me, smiling, "but I thought it might warm up enough for a swim a little later."
She threw the robe aside, and I saw she was wearing a scanty garment beneath it. Evidently the huddlers didn't swim naked, and I wondered at a moral code that sanctioned drinking alcohol but was ashamed of the human body.
I was glad the house had been cold when I answered the maid's summons, for I had worn a robe I'd found there.
Fruit juice and wheat cakes and sausage and toast and jelly and eggs and milk. We ate in a small room, off a larger dining room, a small room whose walls were glass on two sides.
"It's too old a house to modernize completely," Jean told me. "I grew up in this house."
"You don't—work, Jean?"
"No. Should I?"
"Work or study. Life must be very dull if you don't do one of those."