Page 129 - tender-is-the-night

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In the square, as they came out, a suspended mass of gas-
oline exhaust cooked slowly in the July sun. It was a terrible
thing— unlike pure heat it held no promise of rural escape
but suggested only roads choked with the same foul asthma.
During their luncheon, outdoors, across from the Luxem-
bourg Gardens, Rosemary had cramps and felt fretful and
full of impatient lassitude—it was the foretaste of this that
had inspired her self-accusation of selfishness in the sta-
tion.
Dick had no suspicion of the sharpness of the change;
he was profoundly unhappy and the subsequent increase of
egotism tended momentarily to blind him to what was going
on round about him, and deprive him of the long ground-
swell of imagination that he counted on for his judgments.
After Mary North left them, accompanied by the Italian
singing teacher who had joined them for coffee and was tak-
ing her to her train, Rosemary, too, stood up, bound for an
engagement at her studio: ‘meet some officials.’
‘And oh—‘ she proposed ‘—if Collis Clay, that Southern
boy—if he comes while you are still sitting here, just tell
him I couldn’t wait; tell him to call me to-morrow.’
Too insouciant, in reaction from the late disturbance,
she had assumed the privileges of a child—the result being
to remind the Divers of their exclusive love for their own

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