Page 247 - tender-is-the-night

‘She’s very—very pretty,’ Nicole said in a detached,
emphatic way, ‘and I thought she was very good in the pic-
ture.’
‘She was well directed. Thinking it over, it wasn’t very
individual.’
‘I thought it was. I can see how she’d be very attractive
to men.’
His heart twisted. To what men? How many men?
—Do you mind if I pull down the curtain?
—Please do, it’s too light in here.
Where now? And with whom?
‘In a few years she’ll look ten years older than you.’
‘On the contrary. I sketched her one night on a theatre
program, I think she’ll last.’
They were both restless in the night. In a day or two Dick
would try to banish the ghost of Rosemary before it became
walled up with them, but for the moment he had no force to
do it. Sometimes it is harder to deprive oneself of a pain than
of a pleasure and the memory so possessed him that for the
moment there was nothing to do but to pretend. This was
more difficult because he was currently annoyed with Ni-
cole, who, after all these years, should recognize symptoms
of strain in herself and guard against them. Twice within
a fortnight she had broken up: there had been the night of
the dinner at Tarmes when he had found her in her bed-
room dissolved in crazy laughter telling Mrs. McKisco she
could not go in the bathroom because the key was thrown
down the well. Mrs. McKisco was astonished and resent-
ful, baffled and yet in a way comprehending. Dick had not

247