Page 103 - tender-is-the-night

and a French executive fluttered about her trying to talk
American slang. ‘Yes, boy,’ he said when there was trouble
with the projector, ‘I have not any benenas.’ Then the lights
went out, there was the sudden click and a flickering noise
and she was alone with Dick at last. They looked at each
other in the half darkness.
‘Dear Rosemary,’ he murmured. Their shoulders
touched. Nicole stirred restlessly at the end of the row and
Abe coughed convulsively and blew his nose; then they all
settled down and the picture ran.
There she was—the school girl of a year ago, hair down
her back and rippling out stiffly like the solid hair of a tan-
agra figure; there she was—SO young and innocent—the
product of her mother’s loving care; there she was—em-
bodying all the immaturity of the race, cutting a new
cardboard paper doll to pass before its empty harlot’s mind.
She remembered how she had felt in that dress, especially
fresh and new under the fresh young silk.
Daddy’s girl. Was it a ‘itty-bitty bravekins and did it suf-
fer? Ooo-ooo-tweet, de tweetest thing, wasn’t she dest too
tweet? Before her tiny fist the forces of lust and corruption
rolled away; nay, the very march of destiny stopped; inevita-
ble became evitable, syllogism, dialectic, all rationality fell
away. Women would forget the dirty dishes at home and
weep, even within the picture one woman wept so long that
she almost stole the film away from Rosemary. She wept all
over a set that cost a fortune, in a Duncan Phyfe dining-
room, in an aviation port, and during a yacht-race that was
only used in two flashes, in a subway and finally in a bath-

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