Page 241 - tender-is-the-night

Another gust of wind strained around the porphyry hills
of la Napoule. There was a hint in the air that the earth was
hurrying on toward other weather; the lush midsummer
moment outside of time was already over.
‘Rosemary’s had crushes but sooner or later she always
turned the man over to me—‘ Mrs. Speers laughed, ‘—for
dissection.’
‘So I was spared.’
‘There was nothing I could have done. She was in love
with you before I ever saw you. I told her to go ahead.’
He saw that no provision had been made for him, or for
Nicole, in Mrs. Speers’ plans—and he saw that her amorali-
ty sprang from the conditions of her own withdrawal. It was
her right, the pension on which her own emotions had re-
tired. Women are necessarily capable of almost anything in
their struggle for survival and can scarcely be convicted of
such man-made crimes as ‘cruelty.’ So long as the shuffle of
love and pain went on within proper walls Mrs. Speers could
view it with as much detachment and humor as a eunuch.
She had not even allowed for the possibility of Rosemary’s
being damaged—or was she certain that she couldn’t be?
‘If what you say is true I don’t think it did her any harm.’
He was keeping up to the end the pretense that he could
still think objectively about Rosemary. ‘She’s over it already.
Still—so many of the important times in life begin by seem-
ing incidental.’
‘This wasn’t incidental,’ Mrs. Speers insisted. ‘You were
the first man—you’re an ideal to her. In every letter she says
that.’

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