Page 124 - tender-is-the-night

‘Speak for yourself. I like people, a lot of people—I
like—‘
Rosemary and Mary North came in sight, walking slow-
ly and searching for Abe, and Nicole burst forth grossly
with ‘Hey! Hi! Hey!’ and laughed and waved the package of
handkerchiefs she had bought for Abe.
They stood in an uncomfortable little group weighted
down by Abe’s gigantic presence: he lay athwart them like
the wreck of a galleon, dominating with his presence his
own weakness and self-indulgence, his narrowness and bit-
terness. All of them were conscious of the solemn dignity
that flowed from him, of his achievement, fragmentary,
suggestive and surpassed. But they were frightened at his
survivant will, once a will to live, now become a will to die.
Dick Diver came and brought with him a fine glowing
surface on which the three women sprang like monkeys
with cries of relief, perching on his shoulders, on the beau-
tiful crown of his hat or the gold head of his cane. Now, for a
moment, they could disregard the spectacle of Abe’s gigan-
tic obscenity. Dick saw the situation quickly and grasped it
quietly. He pulled them out of themselves into the station,
making plain its wonders. Nearby, some Americans were
saying good-by in voices that mimicked the cadence of wa-
ter running into a large old bathtub. Standing in the station,
with Paris in back of them, it seemed as if they were vicari-
ously leaning a little over the ocean, already undergoing a
sea-change, a shifting about of atoms to form the essential
molecule of a new people.
So the well-to-do Americans poured through the station

124 Tender is the Night