The narrator is consumed by the girl lying supine on the bed, robe half-open, and begins “little by little to cast his spell . . . passing his magic wand above her body,” measuring her “with an enchanted yardstick.” Here, again, Humbert Humbert would sneer. But then he did not have the girl look “wild-eyed at his rearing nudity,” caught out like the pedophile he is.
