Although this is not one of the more spectacular scenes in Lolita, it demonstrates Nabokov’s skill, and I believe it is at the heart of the novel. Nabokov called himself a painterly writer, and this scene gives a good indication of what he meant. The description is pregnant with the tension between what has gone on before (Charlotte’s discovery of Humbert’s treachery and their confrontation, leading to Charlotte’s fatal accident) and the knowledge of more terrible things to
