Page 213 - tender-is-the-night

Dick walked beside her, feeling her unhappiness, and
wanting to drink the rain that touched her cheek.
‘I have some new records,’ she said. ‘I can hardly wait to
play them. Do you know—‘
After supper that evening, Dick thought, he would finish
the break; also he wanted to kick Franz’s bottom for hav-
ing partially introduced him to such a sordid business. He
waited in the hall. His eyes followed a beret, not wet with
waiting like Nicole’s beret, but covering a skull recently op-
erated on. Beneath it human eyes peered, found him and
came over:
‘Bonjour, Docteur.’
‘Bonjour, Monsieur.’
‘Il fait beau temps.’
‘Oui, merveilleux.’
‘Vous êtes ici maintenant?’
‘Non, pour la journée seulement.’
‘Ah, bon. Alors—au revoir, Monsieur.’
Glad at having survived another contact, the wretch in
the beret moved away. Dick waited. Presently a nurse came
downstairs and delivered him a message.
‘Miss Warren asks to be excused, Doctor. She wants to lie
down. She wants to have dinner upstairs to-night.’
The nurse hung on his response, half expecting him to
imply that Miss Warren’s attitude was pathological.
‘Oh, I see. Well—‘ He rearranged the flow of his own sa-
liva, the pulse of his heart. ‘I hope she feels better. Thanks.’
He was puzzled and discontent. At any rate it freed him.
Leaving a note for Franz begging off from supper, he

213