Read "Lolita" by Vladimir Nabokov online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
There was a woodlake (Hourglass Lake-not as I had thought it was spelled) a few miles from Ramsdale, and there was one week of great heat at the end of July when we drove there daily. I am now obliged to describe in some tedious detail our last swim there together, one tropical Tuesday morning.
We had left the car in a parking area not far from the road and were making our way down a path cut through the pine forest to the lake, when Charlotte remarked that Jean Farlow, in quest of rare light effects ( Jean belonged to the old school of painting), had seen Leslie taking a dip "in the ebony" (as John had quipped) at five o'clock in the morning last Sunday. "The water," I said, "must have been quite cold."