Page 210 - tender-is-the-night

than feverish, was reminiscent of the frame of a promis-
ing colt—a creature whose life did not promise to be only
a projection of youth upon a grayer screen, but instead, a
true growing; the face would be handsome in middle life; it
would be handsome in old age: the essential structure and
the economy were there.
‘What are you looking at?’
‘I was just thinking that you’re going to be rather hap-
py.’
Nicole was frightened: ‘Am I? All right—things couldn’t
be worse than they have been.’
In the covered woodshed to which she had led him, she sat
crosslegged upon her golf shoes, her burberry wound about
her and her cheeks stung alive by the damp air. Gravely
she returned his gaze, taking in his somewhat proud car-
riage that never quite yielded to the wooden post against
which he leaned; she looked into his face that always tried
to discipline itself into molds of attentive seriousness, after
excursions into joys and mockeries of its own. That part of
him which seemed to fit his reddish Irish coloring she knew
least; she was afraid of it, yet more anxious to explore—this
was his more masculine side: the other part, the trained
part, the consideration in the polite eyes, she expropriated
without question, as most women did.
‘At least this institution has been good for languages,’
said Nicole. ‘I’ve spoken French with two doctors, and Ger-
man with the nurses, and Italian, or something like it, with
a couple of scrubwomen and one of the patients, and I’ve
picked up a lot of Spanish from another.’

210 Tender is the Night