Then she returned to the bedroom and did her abundant glossy chestnut hair, and by innumerable small stages dressed. He was reading his papers, but she knew that he was also watching her, and she loved him to watch her dress, from the first stage to the last. She was too young to have anything to conceal, and his pleasure, which he tried to mask, was so obvious. He dropped _The Times_ and turned to the French paper. "Felix, do you know what?" "What?" "I’m frightfully ashamed of not being able to speak French. If I could only speak it a quarter as well as you do." "That’s nothing. I couldn’t say two words without a Frenchman knowing instantly that I wasn’t French." "But you can talk it so quickly. Couldn’t I have someone in here every morning to teach me for an hour? People do. I could get up earlier." "Certainly not," Felix replied. "If you did you’d have something to be late for. You’d bring time into existence and spoil everything. Besides, learning French is hard work. You wouldn’t learn it by instinct, as you learn clothes. And you aren’t here for hard work. Learn French by all means, but not in this place. London’s the place for hard work. Exercise your sense of the fitness of things, my clever girl." She did not fully understand this philosophy, but she accepted it admiringly. "What dress would you like me to wear, darling?" She was at the wardrobe. "That white one." "Then I shall have to change my stockings." "Well, the yellow one, then. It doesn’t matter." "Of course it matters," she said with earnestness, sitting down religiously, fanatically, to change her stockings. "Don’t you know that I don’t want anything in the world except to please you? I only wanted to learn French so you shouldn’t have to be ashamed of me." II The Big Yacht After lunching to music beneath a vast parasol in the hotel garden, which looked like a tented field, they were bowed away by servitors in black and white, and bowed into the hotel by servitors in blue and gold, and bowed along the central artery of the hotel by apprentice-servitors in scarlet, and bowed out of the hotel again on to the promenade by servitors in blue and gold. It was half-past two; the glorious sun was already slipping down; they had done absolutely nothing, and yet they had not wasted a moment; and on the faces of all the many-coloured servitors there was the smiling assurance that they had been admirably exerting themselves in full correctness, and had not a moment to waste if they honestly desired to pursue idleness as idleness ought to be pursued. Indeed, the winter day was too short for the truly conscientious. "Your little fur?" exclaimed Felix, who was wearing his overcoat; he stopped. "But, darling, I’m far too hot as it is!" "In an hour the day will be gone," said he, and insisted on the treachery of the climate.