"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.
He frequently insisted on the treachery of the climate. If he happened to cough ever so slightly, he would say that the entire Riviera was bad for the throat and that a sore throat was the most dangerous complaint known to man. Lilian indulgently thought him fussy about her health and his own and the awful menaces of the exquisite climate; but she did not attribute his fussiness to his age; she regarded him as merely happening to be a bit fussy on certain matters. Nor did she regret the fussiness, for it gave her new occasions to please him and (in her heart) to condescend femininely towards him.
"Please! I’ll fetch it, and I’ll carry it. No! You stay there."
"I know where it is." His voice had become very firm and somewhat tyrannic.
She stood on the pavement, put up her orange sunshade, and mused contentedly upon his prodigious care for her--proof of his passionate attachment. People were passing in both directions all the time on the broad _digue_ beyond the roadway. Some strolled in complete possession of idleness; others hurried after it, with tools such as tennis rackets to help them. Nearly all, men and women, stared at her as they passed, until at length she turned round and faced the revolving door of the hotel.
"Oh! _Thank_ you, dearest; you’re spoiling me horribly. Do let me take it."
"I will not. Of course I am spoiling you. That is what you’re here for. Your highest duty in life is to be spoiled. Let’s go on the Mole."
They set off. A dark man, overdressed in striped flannels, nearly stood still at the sight of Lilian, gazing at her as though he had paid five francs for the right to do so.
"My goodness!" she muttered. "How they do stare here!"
"Why grudge them harmless enjoyment," Felix observed. "You’re giving pleasure to every man that looks at you, and envy to most of the women. You’re fulfilling a very valuable function in the world, If anyone is justified in objecting, I am, and I don’t object. On the contrary, I’m as proud of the staring as if I’d created you. There’s nothing to beat you on this coast, with your ingenuous English style of beauty, and half the pretty women here would sell their souls to look as innocent as you _look_, believe me!"