Page 243 - tender-is-the-night
P. 243
her real depths are Irish and romantic and illogical.’
Mrs. Speers knew too that Rosemary, for all her delicate
surface, was a young mustang, perceptibly by Captain Doc-
tor Hoyt, U.S.A. Cross-sectioned, Rosemary would have
displayed an enormous heart, liver and soul, all crammed
close together under the lovely shell.
Saying good-by, Dick was aware of Elsie Speers’ full
charm, aware that she meant rather more to him than mere-
ly a last unwillingly relinquished fragment of Rosemary. He
could possibly have made up Rosemary—he could never
have made up her mother. If the cloak, spurs and brilliants
in which Rosemary had walked off were things with which
he had endowed her, it was nice in contrast to watch her
mother’s grace knowing it was surely something he had not
evoked. She had an air of seeming to wait, as if for a man
to get through with something more important than her-
self, a battle or an operation, during which he must not be
hurried or interfered with. When the man had finished she
would be waiting, without fret or impatience, somewhere
on a highstool, turning the pages of a newspaper.
‘Good-by—and I want you both to remember always
how fond of you Nicole and I have grown.’
Back at the Villa Diana, he went to his work-room, and
opened the shutters, closed against the mid-day glare. On
his two long tables, in ordered confusion, lay the materi-
als of his book. Volume I, concerned with Classification,
had achieved some success in a small subsidized edition. He
was negotiating for its reissue. Volume II was to be a great
amplification of his first little book, A Psychology for Psy-
243