18When the bride is a window and the groom is a widower; when the formerhas lived in Our Great Little Town for hardly two years, and the latter forhardly a month; when Monsieur wants to get the whole damned thing over withas quickly as possible, and Madame gives in with a tolerant smile; then, myreader, the wedding is generally a "quiet" affair. The bride may dispensewith a tiara of orange blossoms securing her finger-tip veil, nor does shecarry a white orchid in a prayer book. The bride's little daughter mighthave added to the ceremonies uniting H. and H. a touch of vivid vermeil; butI knew I would not dare be too tender with cornered Lolita yet, andtherefore agreed it was not worth while tearing the child away from herbeloved Camp Q. My soi-disant passionate and lonely Charlotte was in everydaylife matter-of-fact and gregarious. Moreover, I discovered that although shecould not control her heart or her cries, she was a woman of principle.Immediately after she had become more or less my mistress (despite thestimulants, her "nervous, eager chиri--a heroic chиri!--hadsome initial trouble, for which, however, he amply compensated her by afantastic display of old-world endearments), good Charlotte interviewed meabout my relations with God. I could have answered that on that score mymind was open; I said, instead--paying my tribute to a pious platitude--thatI believed in a cosmic spirit. Looking down at her fingernails, she alsoasked me had I not in my family a certain strange strain. I countered byinquiring whether she would still want to marry me if my father's maternalgrandfather had been, say, a Turk. She said it did not matter a bit; butthat, if she ever found out I did not believe in Our Christian God, shewould commit suicide. She said it so solemnly that it gave me the creeps. Itwas then I knew she was a woman of principle. Oh, she was very genteel: she said "excuse me" whenever a slight burpinterrupted her flowing speech, called an envelope and ahnvelope, and whentalking to her lady-friends referred to me as Mr. Humbert. I thought itwould please her if I entered the community trailing some glamour after me.On the day of our wedding a little interview with me appeared in the SocietyColumn of the Ramsdale Journal, with a photograph of Charlotte, oneeyebrow up and a misprint in her name ("Hazer"). Despite this contretempts,the publicity warmed the porcelain cockles of her heart--and made my rattlesshake with awful glee. by engaging in church work as well as by getting toknow the better mothers of Lo's schoolmates, Charlotte in the course oftwenty months or so had managed to become if not a prominent, at least anacceptable citizen, but never before had she come under that thrillingrubrique, and it was I who put her there, Mr. Edgar H. Humbert (Ithrew in the "Edgar" just for the heck of it), "writer and explorer."McCoo's brother, when taking it down, asked me what I had written. WhateverI told him came out as "several books on Peacock, Rainbow and other poets."It was also noted that Charlotte and I had known each other for severalyears and that I was a distant relation of her first husband. I hinted I hadhad an affair with her thirteen years ago but this was not mentioned inprint. To Charlotte I said that society columns should contain ashimmer of errors. Let us go on with this curious tale. When called upon to enjoy mypromotion from lodger to lover, did I experience only bitterness anddistaste? No. Mr. Humbert confesses to a certain titillation of his vanity,to some faint tenderness, even to a pattern of remorse daintily runningalong the steel of his conspiratorial dagger. Never had I thought that therather ridiculous, through rather handsome Mrs. Haze, with her blind faithin the wisdom of her church and book club, her mannerisms of elocution, herharsh, cold, contemptuous attitude toward an adorable, downy-armed child oftwelve, could turn into such a touching, helpless creature as soon as I laidmy hands upon her which happened on the threshold of Lolita's room whithershe tremulously backed repeating "no, no, please no." The transformation improved her looks. Her smile that had been such acontrived thing, thenceforth became the radiance of utter adoration--aradiance having something soft and moist about it, in which, with wonder, Irecognized a resemblance to the lovely, inane, lost look that Lo had whengloating over a new kind of concoction at the soda fountain or mutelyadmiring my expensive, always tailor-fresh clothes. Deeply fascinated, Iwould watch Charlotte while she swapped parental woes with some other ladyand made that national grimace of feminine resignation (eyes rolling up,mouth drooping sideways) which, in an infantile form, I had seen Lo makingherself. We had highballs before turning in, and with their help, I wouldmanage to evoke the child while caressing the mother. This was the whitestomach within which my nymphet had been a little curved fish in 1934. Thiscarefully dyed hair, so sterile to my sense of smell and touch, acquired atcertain lamplit moments in the poster bed the tinge, if not the texture, ofLolita's curls. I kept telling myself, as I wielded my brand-newlarge-as-life wife, that biologically this was the nearest I could get toLolita; that at Lolita's age, Lotte had been as desirable a schoolgirl asher daughter was, and as Lolita's daughter would be some day. I had my wifeunearth from under a collection of shoes (Mr. Haze had a passion for them,it appears) a thirty-year-old album, so that I might see how Lotte hadlooked as a child; and even though the light was wrong and the dressesgraceless, I was able to make out a dim first version of Lolita's outline,legs, cheekbones, bobbed nose. Lottelita, Lolitchen. So I tom-peeped across the hedges of years, into wan little windows.And when, by means of pitifully ardent, naively lascivious caresses, she ofthe noble nipple and massive thigh prepared me for the performance of mynightly duty, it was still a nymphet's scent that in despair I tried to pickup, as I bayed through the undergrowth of dark decaying forests. I simply can't tell you how gentle, how touching my poor wife was. Atbreakfast, in the depressingly bright kitchen, with its chrome glitter andHardware and Co. Calendar and cute breakfast nook (simulating that CoffeeShoppe where in their college days Charlotte and Humbert used to cootogether), she would sit, robed in red, her elbow on the plastic-toppedtable, her cheek propped on her fist, and stare at me with intolerabletenderness as I consumed my ham and eggs. Humbert's face might twitch withneuralgia, but in her eyes it vied in beauty and animation with the sun andshadows of leaves rippling on the white refrigerator. My solemn exasperationwas to her the silence of love. My small income added to her even smallerone impressed her as a brilliant fortune; not because the resulting sum nowsufficed for most middle-class needs, but because even my money shone in hereyes with the magic of my manliness, and she saw our joint account as one ofthose southern boulevards at midday that have solid shade on one side andsmooth sunshine on the other, all the way to the end of a prospect, wherepink mountains loom. Into the fifty days of our cohabitation Charlotte crammed theactivities of as many years. The poor woman busied herself with a number ofthings she had foregone long before or had never been much interested in, asif (to prolong these Proustian intonations) by my marrying the mother of thechild I loved I had enabled my wife to regain an abundance of youth byproxy. With the zest of a banal young bride, she started to "glorify thehome." Knowing as I did its every cranny by heart--since those days whenfrom my chair I mentally mapped out Lolita's course through the house--I hadlong entered into a sort of emotional relationship with it, with its veryugliness and dirt, and now I could almost feel the wretched thing cower inits reluctance to endure the bath of ecru and ocher and putt-buff-and-snuffthat Charlotte planned to give it. She never got as far as that, thank God,but she did use up a tremendous amount of energy in washing window shades,waxing the slats of Venetian blinds, purchasing new shades and new blinds,returning them to the store, replacing them by others, and so on, in aconstant chiaroscuro of smiles and frowns, doubts and pouts. She dabbled incretonnes and chintzes; she changed the colors of the sofa--the sacred sofawhere a bubble of paradise had once burst in slow motion within me. Sherearranged the furniture--and was pleased when she found, in a householdtreatise, that "it is permissible to separate a pair of sofa commodes andtheir companion lamps." With the authoress of Your Home Is You, shedeveloped a hatred for little lean chairs and spindle tables. She believedthat a room having a generous expanse of glass, and lots of rich woodpaneling was an example of the masculine type of room, whereas the femininetype was characterized by lighter-looking windows and frailer woodwork. Thenovels I had found her reading when I moved in were now replaced byillustrated catalogues and homemaking guides. From a firm located at 4640Roosevelt Blvd., Philadelphia, she ordered for our double bed a "damaskcovered 312 coil mattress"--although the old one seemed to me resilient anddurable enough for whatever it had to support. A Midwesterner, as her late husband had also been, she had lived in coyRamsdale, the gem of an eastern state, not long enough to know all the nicepeople. She knew slightly the jovial dentist who lived in a kind oframshackle wooden chateau behind our lawn. She had met at a church tea the"snooty" wife of the local junk dealer who owned the "colonial" white horrorat the corner of the avenue. Now and then she "visited with" old MissOpposite; but the more patrician matrons among those she called upon, or metat lawn functions, or had telephone chats with--such dainty ladies as Mrs.Glave, Mrs. Sheridan, Mrs. McCrystal, Mrs. Knight and others, seldom seemedto call on my neglected Charlotte. Indeed, the only couple with whom she hadrelations of real cordiality, devoid of any arriхre-pensиe orpractical foresight, were the Farlows who had just come back from a businesstrip to Chile in time to attend our wedding, with the Chatfields, McCoos,and a few others (but not Mrs. Junk or the even prouder Mrs. Talbot). JohnFarlow was a middle-aged, quiet, quietly athletic, quietly successful dealerin sporting goods, who had an office at Parkington, forty miles away: it washe who got me the cartridges for that Colt and showed me how to use it,during a walk in the woods one Sunday; he was also what he called with asmile a part-time lawyer and had handled some of Charlotte's affairs. Jean,his youngish wife (and first cousin), was a long-limbed girl in harlequinglasses with two boxer dogs, two pointed breasts and a big red mouth. Shepainted--landscapes and portraits--and vividly do I remember praising, overcocktails, the picture she had made of a niece of hers, little RosalineHoneck, a rosy honey in a Girl Scout uniform, beret of green worsted, beltof green webbing, charming shoulder-long curls--and John removed his pipeand said it was a pity Dolly (my Dolita) and Rosaline were so critical ofeach other at school, but he hoped, and we all hoped, they would get onbetter when they returned from their respective camps. We talked of theschool. It had its drawbacks, and it had its virtues. "Of course, too manyof the tradespeople here are Italians," said John, "but on the other hand weare still spared--" "I wish," interrupted Jean with a laugh, "Dolly andRosaline were spending the summer together." Suddenly I imagined Loreturning from camp--brown, warm, drowsy, drugged--and was ready to weepwith passion and impatience.19A few words more about Mrs. Humbert while the going is good (a badaccident is to happen quite soon). I had been always aware of the possessivestreak in her, but I never thought she would be so crazily jealous ofanything in my life that had not been she. She showed a fierce insatiablecuriosity for my past. She desired me to resuscitate all my loves so thatshe might make me insult them, and trample upon them, and revoke themapostately and totally, thus destroying my past. She made me tell her aboutmy marriage to Valeria, who was of course a scream; but I also had toinvent, or to pad atrociously, a long series of mistresses for Charlotte'smorbid delectation. To keep her happy, I had to present her with anillustrated catalogue of them, all nicely differentiated, according to therules of those American ads where schoolchildren are pictured in a subtleratio of races, with one--only one, but as cute as they makethem--chocolate-colored round-eyed little lad, almost in the very middle ofthe front row. So I presented my women, and had them smile and sway--thelanguorous blond, the fiery brunette, the sensual copperhead--as if onparade in a bordello. The more popular and platitudinous I made them, themore Mrs. Humbert was pleased with the show. Never in my life had I confessed so much or received so manyconfessions. The sincerity and artlessness with which she discussed what shecalled her "love-life," from first necking to connubial catch-as-catch-can,were, ethically, in striking contrast with my glib compositions, buttechnically the two sets were congeneric since both were affected by thesame stuff (soap operas, psychoanalysis and cheap novelettes) upon which Idrew for my characters and she for her mode of expression. I wasconsiderably amused by certain remarkable sexual habits that the good HaroldHaze had had according to Charlotte who thought my mirth improper; butotherwise her autobiography was as devoid of interests as her autopsy wouldhave been. I never saw a healthier woman than she, despite thinning diets. Of my Lolita she seldom spoke--more seldom, in fact, than she did ofthe blurred, blond male baby whose photograph to the exclusion of all othersadorned our bleak bedroom. In once of her tasteless reveries, she predictedthat the dead infant's soul would return to earth in the form of the childshe would bear in her present wedlock. And although I felt no special urgeto supply the Humbert line with a replica of Harold's production (Lolita,with an incestuous thrill, I had grown to regard as my child), itoccurred to me that a prolonged confinement, with a nice Cesarean operationand other complications in a safe maternity ward sometime next spring, wouldgive me a chance to be alone with my Lolita for weeks, perhaps--and gorgethe limp nymphet with sleeping pills. Oh, she simply hated her daughter! What I thought especially viciouswas that she had gone out of her way to answer with great diligence thequestionnaires in a fool's book she had (A guide to Your Child'sDevelopment), published in Chicago. The rigmarole went year by year, andMom was supposed to fill out a kind of inventory at each of her child'sbirthdays. On Lo's twelfth, January 1, 1947, Charlotte Haze, nиe Becker, hadunderlined the following epithets, ten out of forty, under "Your Child'sPersonality": aggressive, boisterous, critical, distrustful, impatient,irritable, inquisitive, listless, negativistic (underlined twice) andobstinate. She had ignored the thirty remaining adjectives, among which werecheerful, co-operative, energetic, and so forth. It was really maddening.With a brutality that otherwise never appeared in my loving wife's mildnature, she attacked and routed such of Lo's little belongings that hadwandered to various parts of the house to freeze there like so manyhypnotized bunnies. Little did the good lady dream that one morning when anupset stomach (the result of my trying to improve on her sauces) hadprevented me from accompanying her to church, I deceived her with one ofLolita's anklets. And then, her attitude toward my saporous darling'sletters! "Dear Mummy and Hummy, Hope you are fine. Thank you very much for the candy. I [crossed outand re-written again] I lost my new sweater in the woods. It has been coldhere for the last few days. I'm having a time. Love, Dolly." "The dumb child," said Mrs. Humbert, "has left out a word before'time.' That sweater was all-wool, and I wish you would not send her candywithout consulting me."20There was a woodlake (Hourglass Lake--not as I had thought it wasspelled) a few miles from Ramsdale, and there was one week of great heat atthe end of July when we drove there daily. I am now obliged to describe insome tedious detail our last swim there together, one tropical Tuesdaymorning. We had left the car in a parking area not far from the road and weremaking our way down a path cut through the pine forest to the lake, whenCharlotte remarked that Jean Farlow, in quest of rare light effects (Jeanbelonged to the old school of painting), had seen Leslie taking a dip "inthe ebony" (as John had quipped) at five o'clock in the morning last Sunday. "The water," I said, "must have been quite cold." "That is not the point," said the logical doomed dear. "He issubnormal, you see. And," she continued (in that carefully phrased way ofhers that was beginning to tell on my health), "I have a very definitefeeling our Louise is in love with that moron." Feeling. "We feel Dolly is not doing as well" etc. (from an old schoolreport). The Humberts walked on, sandaled and robed. "Do you know, Hum: I have one most ambitious dream," pronounced LadyHum, lowering her head--shy of that dream--and communing with the tawnyground. "I would love to get hold of a real trained servant maid like thatGerman girl the Talbots spoke of; and have her live in the house." "No room," I said. "Come," she said with her quizzical smile, "surely, chиri, youunderestimate the possibilities of the Humbert home. We would put her inLo's room. I intended to make a guestroom of that hole anyway. It's thecoldest and meanest in the whole house." "What are you talking about?" I asked, the skin of my cheekbonestensing up (this I take the trouble to note only because my daughter's skindid the same when she felt that way: disbelief, disgust, irritation). "Are you bothered by Romantic Associations?" queried my wife--inallusion to her first surrender. "Hell no," said I. "I just wonder where will you put your daughter whenyou get your guest or your maid." "Ah," said Mrs. Humbert, dreaming, smiling, drawing out the "Ah"simultaneously with the raise of one eyebrow and a soft exhalation ofbreath. "Little Lo, I'm afraid, does not enter the picture at all, at all.Little Lo goes straight from camp to a good boarding school with strictdiscipline and some sound religious training. And then--Beardsley College. Ihave it all mapped out, you need not worry." She went on to say that she, Mrs. Humbert, would have to overcome herhabitual sloth and write to Miss Phalli's sister who taught at St. Algebra.The dazzling lake emerged. I said I had forgotten my sunglasses in the carand would catch up with her. I had always thought that wringing one's hands was a fictionalgesture--the obscure outcome, perhaps, of some medieval ritual; but as Itook to the woods, for a spell of despair and desperate meditation, this wasthe gesture ("look, Lord, at these chains!") that would have come nearest tothe mute expression of my mood. Had Charlotte been Valeria, I would have known how to handle thesituation; and "handle" is the word I want. In the good old days, by merelytwisting fat Valechka's brittle wrist (the one she had fallen upon from abicycle) I could make her change her mind instantly; but anything of thesort in regard to Charlotte was unthinkable. Bland American Charlottefrightened me. My lighthearted dream of controlling her through her passionfor me was all wrong. I dared not do anything to spoil the image of me shehad set up to adore. I had toadied to her when she was the awesome duenna ofmy darling, and a groveling something still persisted in my attitude towardher. The only ace I held was her ignorance of my monstrous love for her Lo.She had been annoyed by Lo's liking me; but my feelings she could notdivine. To Valeria I might have said: "Look here, you fat fool, c'est moiqui dиcide what is good for Dolores Humbert." To Charlotte, I could noteven say (with ingratiating calm): "Excuse me, my dear, I disagree. Let usgive the child one more chance. Let me be her private tutor for a year orso. You once told me yourself--" In fact, I could not say anything at all toCharlotte about the child without giving myself away. Oh, you cannot imagine(as I had never imagined) what these women of principle are! Charlotte, whodid not notice the falsity of all the everyday conventions and rules ofbehavior, and foods, and books, and people she doted upon, would distinguishat once a false intonation in anything I might say with a view to keeping Lonear. She was like a musician who may be an odious vulgarian in ordinarylife, devoid of tact and taste; but who will hear a false note in music withdiabolical accuracy of judgment. To break Charlotte's will, I would have tobreak her heart. If I broke her heart, her image of me would break too. If Isaid: "Either I have my way with Lolita, and you help me to keep the matterquiet, or we part at once," she would have turned as pale as a woman ofclouded glass and slowly replied: "All right, whatever you add or retract,this is the end." And the end it would be. Such, then, was the mess. I remember reaching the parking area andpumping a handful of rust-tasting water, and drinking it as avidly as if itwould give me magic wisdom, youth, freedom, a tiny concubine. For a while,purple-robed, heel-dangling, I sat on the edge of one of the rude tables,under the whooshing pines. In the middle distance, two little maidens inshorts and halters came out of a sun-dappled privy marked "Women."Gum-chewing Mabel (or Mabel's understudy) laboriously, absentmindedlystraddled a bicycle, and Marion, shaking her hair because of the flies,settled behind, legs wide apart; and wobbling, they slowly, absently, mergedwith the light and shade. Lolita! Father and daughter melting into thesewoods! The natural solution was to destroy Mrs. Humbert. But how? No man can bring about the perfect murder; chance, however, can do it.There was the famous dispatch of a Mme Lacour in Arles, southern France, atthe close of last century. An unidentified bearded six-footer, who, it waslater conjectured, had been the lady's secret lover, walked up to her in acrowded street, soon after her marriage to Colonel Lacour, and mortallystabbed her in the back, three times, while the Colonel, a small bulldog ofa man, hung onto the murderer's arm. By a miraculous and beautifulcoincidence, right at the moment when the operator was in the act ofloosening the angry little husband's jaws (while several onlookers wereclosing in upon the group), a cranky Italian in the house nearest to thescene set off by sheer accident some kind of explosive he was tinkeringwith, and immediately the street was turned into a pandemonium of smoke,falling bricks and running people. The explosion hurt no one (except that itknocked out game Colonel Lacour); but the lady's vengeful lover ran when theothers ran--and lived happily ever after. Now look what happens when the operator himself plans a perfectremoval. I walked down to Hourglass Lake. The spot from which we and a few other"nice" couples (the Farlows, the Chatfields) bathed was a kind of smallcove; my Charlotte liked it because it was almost "a private beach." Themain bathing facilities (or drowning facilities" as the RamsdaleJournal had had occasion to say) were in the left (eastern) part ofthe hourglass, and could not be seen from our covelet. To our right, thepines soon gave way to a curve of marshland which turned again into foreston the opposite side. I sat down beside my wife so noiselessly that she started. "Shall we go in?" she asked. "We shall in a minute. Let me follow a train of thought." I thought. More than a minute passed. "All right. Come on." "Was I on that train?" "You certainly were." "I hope so," said Charlotte entering the water. It soon reached thegooseflesh of her thick thighs; and then, joining her outstretched hands,shutting her mouth tight, very plain-faced in her black rubber headgear,charlotte flung herself forward with a great splash. Slowly we swam out into the shimmer of the lake. On the opposite bank, at least a thousand paces away (if one cold walkacross water), I could make out the tiny figures of two men working likebeavers on their stretch of shore. I knew exactly who they were: a retiredpoliceman of Polish descent and the retired plumber who owned most of thetimber on that side of the lake. And I also knew they were engaged inbuilding, just for the dismal fun of the thing, a wharf. The knocks thatreached us seemed so much bigger than what could be distinguished of thosedwarfs' arms and tools; indeed, one suspected the director of thoseacrosonic effects to have been at odds with the puppet-master, especiallysince the hefty crack of each diminutive blow lagged behind its visualversion. The short white-sand strip of "our" beach--from which by now we hadgone a little way to reach deep water--was empty on weekday mornings. Therewas nobody around except those two tiny very busy figures on the oppositeside, and a dark-red private plane that droned overhead, and thendisappeared in the blue. The setting was really perfect for a brisk bubblingmurder, and here was the subtle point: the man of law and the man of waterwere just near enough to witness an accident and just far enough not toobserve a crime. They were near enough to hear a distracted bather thrashingabout and bellowing for somebody to come and help him save his drowningwife; and they were too far to distinguish (if they happened to look toosoon) that the anything but distracted swimmer was finishing to tread hiswife underfoot. I was not yet at that stage; I merely want to convey theease of the act, the nicety of the setting! So there was Charlotte swimmingon with dutiful awkwardness (she was a very mediocre mermaid), but notwithout a certain solemn pleasure (for was not her merman by her side?); andas I watched, with the stark lucidity of a future recollection (youknow--trying to see things as you will remember having seen them), theglossy whiteness of her wet face so little tanned despite all her endeavors,and her pale lips, and her naked convex forehead, and the tight black cap,and the plump wet neck, I knew that all I had to do was to drop back, take adeep breath, then grab her by the ankle and rapidly dive with my captivecorpse. I say corpse because surprise, panic and inexperience would causeher to inhale at once a lethal gallon of lake, while I would be able to holdon for at least a full minute, open-eyed under water. The fatal gesturepassed like the tail of a falling star across the blackness of thecontemplated crime. It was like some dreadful silent ballet, the male dancerholding the ballerina by her foot and streaking down through waterytwilight. I might come up for a mouthful of air while still holding herdown, and then would dive again as many times as would be necessary, andonly when the curtain came down on her for good, would I permit myself toyell for help. And when some twenty minutes later the two puppets steadilygrowing arrived in a rowboat, one half newly painted, poor Mrs. HumbertHumbert, the victim of a cramp or coronary occlusion, or both, would bestanding on her head in the inky ooze, some thirty feet below the smilingsurface of Hourglass Lake. Simple, was it not? But what d'ye know, folks--I just could not makemyself do it! She swam beside me, a trustful and clumsy seal, and all the logic ofpassion screamed in my ear: Now is the time! And, folks, I just couldn't! Insilence I turned shoreward and gravely, dutifully, she also turned, andstill hell screamed its counsel, and still I could not make myself drown thepoor, slippery, big-bodied creature. The scream grew more and more remote asI realized the melancholy fact that neither tomorrow, nor Friday, nor anyother day or night, could I make myself put her to death. Oh, I couldvisualize myself slapping Valeria's breasts out of alignment, or otherwisehurting her--and I could see myself, no less clearly, shooting her lover inthe underbelly and making him say "akh!" and sit down. But I could not killCharlotte--especially when things were on the whole not quite as hopeless,perhaps, as they seemed at first wince on that miserable morning. Were I tocatch her by her strong kicking foot; were I to see her amazed look, hearher awful voice; were I still to go through with the ordeal, her ghost wouldhaunt me all my life. Perhaps if the year were 1447 instead of 1947 I mighthave hoodwinked my gentle nature by administering her some classical poisonfrom a hollow agate, some tender philter of death. But in our middle-classnosy era it would not have come off the way it used to in the brocadedpalaces of the past. Nowadays you have to be a scientist if you want to be akiller. No, no, I was neither. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, themajority of sex offenders that hanker for some throbbing, sweet-moaning,physical but not necessarily coital, relation with a girl-child, areinnocuous, inadequate, passive, timid strangers who merely ask the communityto allow them to pursue their practically harmless, so-called aberrantbehavior, their little hot wet private acts of sexual deviation without thepolice and society cracking down upon them. We are not sex fiends! We do notrape as good soldiers do. We are unhappy, mild, dog-eyed gentlemen,sufficiently well integrated to control our urge in the presence of adults,but ready to give years and years of life for one chance to touch a nymphet.Emphatically, no killers are we. Poets never kill. Oh, my poor Charlotte, donot hate me in your eternal heaven among an eternal alchemy of asphalt andrubber and metal and stone--but thank God, not water, not water! Nonetheless it was a very close shave, speaking quite objectively. Andnow comes the point of my perfect-crime parable. We sat down on our towels in the thirsty sun. She looked around,loosened her bra, and turned over on her stomach to give her back a chanceto be feasted upon. She said she loved me. She sighed deeply. She extendedone arm and groped in the pocket of her robe for her cigarettes. She sat upand smoked. She examined her right shoulder. She kissed me heavily with opensmoky mouth. Suddenly, down the sand bank behind us, from under the bushesand pines, a stone rolled, then another. "Those disgusting prying kids," said Charlotte, holding up her big brato her breast and turning prone again. "I shall have to speak about that toPeter Krestovski." From the debouchment of the trail came a rustle, a footfall, and JeanFarlow marched down with her easel and things. "You scared us," said Charlotte. Jean said she had been up there, in a place of green concealment,spying on nature (spies are generally shot), trying to finish a lakescape,but it was no good, she had no talent whatever (which was quite true)--"Andhave you ever tried painting, Humbert?" Charlotte, who was a littlejealous of Jean, wanted to know if John was coming. He was. He was coming home for lunch today. He had dropped her on theway to Parkington and should be picking her up any time now. It was a grandmorning. She always felt a traitor to Cavall and Melampus for leaving themroped on such gorgeous days. She sat down on the white sand betweenCharlotte and me. She wore shorts. Her long brown legs were about asattractive to me as those of a chestnut mare. She showed her gums when shesmiled. "I almost put both of you into my lake," she said. "I even noticedsomething you overlooked. You [addressing Humbert] had your wrist watch onin, yes, sir, you had." "Waterproof," said Charlotte softly, making a fish mouth. Jean took my wrist upon her knee and examined Charlotte's gift, thenput back Humbert's hand on the sand, palm up. "You could see anything that way," remarked Charlotte coquettishly. Jean sighed. "I once saw," she said, "two children, male and female, atsunset, right here, making love. Their shadows were giants. And I told youabout Mr. Tomson at daybreak. Next time I expect to see fat old Ivor in theivory. He is really a freak, that man. Last time he told me a completelyindecent story about his nephew. It appears--" "Hullo there," said John's voice.