Page 184 - tender-is-the-night

clocks.
—Today we climbed high enough to find asphodel and
edelweiss ...
After that the letters were fewer, but he answered them
all. There was one:
I wish someone were in love with me like boys were ages
ago before I was sick. I suppose it will be years, though, be-
fore I could think of anything like that.
But when Dick’s answer was delayed for any reason, there
was a fluttering burst of worry—like a worry of a lover: ‘Per-
haps I have bored you,’ and: ‘Afraid I have presumed,’ and:
‘I keep thinking at night you have been sick.’
In actuality Dick was sick with the flu. When he recov-
ered, all except the formal part of his correspondence was
sacrificed to the consequent fatigue, and shortly afterward
the memory of her became overlaid by the vivid presence of
a Wisconsin telephone girl at headquarters in Bar-sur-Aube.
She was red-lipped like a poster, and known obscenely in
the messes as ‘The Switchboard.’
Franz came back into his office feeling self-important.
Dick thought he would probably be a fine clinician, for
the sonorous or staccato cadences by which he disciplined
nurse or patient came not from his nervous system but from
a tremendous and harmless vanity. His true emotions were
more ordered and kept to himself.
‘Now about the girl, Dick,’ he said. ‘Of course, I want to
find out about you and tell you about myself, but first about
the girl, because I have been waiting to tell you about it so
long.’

184 Tender is the Night