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
   238   239   240   241   242   243   244   245   246   247   248