Page 116 - tender-is-the-night

court jeweller when the car arrived in Teheran the following
week. There was only one real seat in back, because the Shah
must ride alone, so they took turns riding in it and sitting
on the marten fur that covered the floor.
But always there was Dick. Rosemary assured the image
of her mother, ever carried with her, that never, never had
she known any one so nice, so thoroughly nice as Dick was
that night. She compared him with the two Englishmen,
whom Abe addressed conscientiously as ‘Major Hengest
and Mr. Horsa,’ and with the heir to a Scandinavian throne
and the novelist just back from Russia, and with Abe, who
was desperate and witty, and with Collis Clay, who joined
them somewhere and stayed along—and felt there was no
comparison. The enthusiasm, the selflessness behind the
whole performance ravished her, the technic of moving
many varied types, each as immobile, as dependent on sup-
plies of attention as an infantry battalion is dependent on
rations, appeared so effortless that he still had pieces of his
own most personal self for everyone.
—Afterward she remembered the times when she had felt
the happiest. The first time was when she and Dick danced
together and she felt her beauty sparkling bright against
his tall, strong form as they floated, hovering like people
in an amusing dream—he turned her here and there with
such a delicacy of suggestion that she was like a bright bou-
quet, a piece of precious cloth being displayed before fifty
eyes. There was a moment when they were not dancing at
all, simply clinging together. Some time in the early morn-
ing they were alone, and her damp powdery young body

116 Tender is the Night