Page 163 - tender-is-the-night

vision as well as to those associational fragments in the sub-
conscious that we seem to hang on to, as a glass-fitter keeps
the irregularly shaped pieces that may do some time—this
fact might account for what Rosemary afterward mystically
described as ‘realizing’ that there was some one in the room,
before she could determine it. But when she did realize it
she turned swift in a sort of ballet step and saw that a dead
Negro was stretched upon her bed.
As she cried ‘aaouu!’ and her still unfastened wristwatch
banged against the desk she had the preposterous idea that
it was Abe North. Then she dashed for the door and across
the hall.
Dick was straightening up; he had examined the gloves
worn that day and thrown them into a pile of soiled gloves
in a corner of a trunk. He had hung up coat and vest and
spread his shirt on another hanger—a trick of his own.
‘You’ll wear a shirt that’s a little dirty where you won’t wear
a mussed shirt.’ Nicole had come in and was dumping one
of Abe’s extraordinary ash-trays into the waste-basket when
Rosemary tore into the room.
‘DICK! DICK! Come and see!’
Dick jogged across the hall into her room. He knelt to
Peterson’s heart, and felt the pulse—the body was warm, the
face, harassed and indirect in life, was gross and bitter in
death; the box of materials was held under one arm but the
shoe that dangled over the bedside was bare of polish and
its sole was worn through. By French law Dick had no right
to touch the body but he moved the arm a little to see some-
thing—there was a stain on the green coverlet, there would

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