The breeze from the sea was blowing through the room and he was reading with his shoulders and the small of his back against two pillows and another folded behind his head. He was sleepy after lunch but he felt hollow with waiting for her and he read and waited. Then he heard the door open and she came in and for an instant he did not know her. She stood there with her hands below her breasts on the cashmere sweater and breathing as though she had been running.
“Oh, no,” she said. “No.”
Then she was on the bed pushing her head against him saying, “No. No. Please David. Don’t you at all?”
He held her head close against his chest and felt it smooth close clipped and coarsely silky and she pushed it hard against him again and again.
‘What did you do, Devil?”
She raised her head and looked at him and her lips pressed against his and she moved them from side to side and moved on the bed so her body was pressed against his.
“Now I can tell,” she said. “I’m so glad. It was such a big chance. I’m your new girl now so we’d better find out.”
“Let me see.
“I’ll show you but let me go a minute.”
She came back and stood by the bed with the sun on her through the window. She had dropped the skirt and was bare foot wearing only the sweater and the pearls.
“Take a good look,” she said. “Because this is how I am.”
He took a good look at the long dark legs the straight standing body the dark face and the sculptured tawny head and she looked at him and said, “Thank you.
“How did you do it?”
“Can I tell you in bed?”
“If you tell me in a hurry.”
“No. Not in a hurry. Let me tell. First I had the idea on the road somewhere after Aix en Provence. At Nimes when we were walking in the garden I think. But I didn’t know how it would work or how to tell them how to do it. Then I thought it out and yesterday I decided.”
David stroked his hand over her head from her neck over the top of her head to her forehead.
“Let me tell,” she said. “I knew they must have good coiffeurs in Biarritz because of the English. So when I got there I went to the best place and I told the coiffeur that I wanted it all brushed forward and he brushed it and it came down to my nose and I could hardly see through it and I said I wanted it cut like a boy when he would first go to public school. He asked me what school so I said Eton or Winchester because they were the only schools I could remember except Rugby and I didn’t want Rugby certainly. He said which. So I said Eton but forward all the way. So after he was finished and I looked like the most attractive girl who ever went to Eton I just had him keep on shortening it until Eton was all gone and then I had him keep on shortening it. Then he said very severely that is not an Eton crop, Mademoiselle. And I said I didn’t want an Eton crop, Monsieur. That was the only way I knew how to explain what I wanted and it is Madame not Mademoiselle. So then I had him shorten it some more and then I kept him shortening it and it is either wonderful or terrible. You don’t mind it on my forehead? When it was Eton it fell in my eye.
“It’s wonderful.”
“It’s awfully classic,” she said. “But it feels like an animal. Feel it.”
He felt it.
“Don’t worry about it being too classic,” she said. “My mouth balances it. Now can we make love?”
She bent her head forward and he pulled the sweater over her head and down off her arms and bent over her neck to unhook the safety clasp.
“No leave them.”
She lay back on the bed her brown legs tight together and her head against the flat sheet the pearls slanted away from the dark rise of her breasts. Her eyes were shut and her arms were by her sides. She was a new girl and he saw her mouth was changed too. She was breathing very carefully and she said, “You do everything. From the beginning. From the very beginning.”