Page 245 - tender-is-the-night

he must keep up a perfect front, now and to-morrow, next
week and next year. All night in Paris he had held her in
his arms while she slept light under the luminol; in the ear-
ly morning he broke in upon her confusion before it could
form, with words of tenderness and protection, and she
slept again with his face against the warm scent of her hair.
Before she woke he had arranged everything at the phone in
the next room. Rosemary was to move to another hotel. She
was to be ‘Daddy’s Girl’ and even to give up saying good-by
to them. The proprietor of the hotel, Mr. McBeth, was to be
the three Chinese monkeys. Packing amid the piled boxes
and tissue paper of many purchases, Dick and Nicole left for
the Riviera at noon.
Then there was a reaction. As they settled down in the
wagon-lit Dick saw that Nicole was waiting for it, and it
came quickly and desperately, before the train was out of
the ceinture—his only instinct was to step off while the
train was still going slow, rush back and see where Rose-
mary was, what she was doing. He opened a book and bent
his pince-nez upon it, aware that Nicole was watching him
from her pillow across the compartment. Unable to read,
he pretended to be tired and shut his eyes but she was still
watching him, and though still she was half asleep from the
hangover of the drug, she was relieved and almost happy
that he was hers again.
It was worse with his eyes shut for it gave a rhythm of
finding and losing, finding and losing; but so as not to ap-
pear restless he lay like that until noon. At luncheon things
were better—it was always a fine meal; a thousand lunches

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