They disapproved, seriously so, at the first instant's glimpse of
her. They thought--such ardent self-deceivers were they--that they
were shocked by her swimming suit. But Freud has pointed out how
persons, where sex is involved, are prone sincerely to substitute
one thing for another thing, and to agonize over the substituted
thing as strenuously as if it were the real thing.
Ida Barton's swimming suit was a very nice one, as women's suits
go. Of thinnest of firm-woven black wool, with white trimmings and
a white belt-line, it was high-throated, short-sleeved, and brief-
skirted. Brief as was the skirt, the leg-tights were no less
brief. Yet on the beach in front of the adjacent Outrigger Club,
and entering and leaving the water, a score of women, not provoking
gasping notice, were more daringly garbed. Their men's suits, as
brief of leg-tights and skirts, fitted them as snugly, but were
sleeveless after the way of men's suits, the arm-holes deeply low-
cut and in-cut, and, by the exposed armpits, advertiseful that the
wearers were accustomed to 1916 decollete.
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