Page 249 - tender-is-the-night

XII

He found Nicole in the garden with her arms folded high
on her shoulders. She looked at him with straight gray eyes,
with a child’s searching wonder.
‘I went to Cannes,’ he said. ‘I ran into Mrs. Speers. She’s
leaving to-morrow. She wanted to come up and say good-by
to you, but I slew the idea.’
‘I’m sorry. I’d like to have seen her. I like her.’
‘Who else do you think I saw—Bartholomew Tailor.’
‘You didn’t.’
‘I couldn’t have missed that face of his, the old experi-
enced weasel. He was looking over the ground for Ciro’s
Menagerie— they’ll all be down next year. I suspected Mrs.
Abrams was a sort of outpost.’
‘And Baby was outraged the first summer we came
here.’
‘They don’t really give a damn where they are, so I don’t
see why they don’t stay and freeze in Deauville.’
‘Can’t we start rumors about cholera or something?’
‘I told Bartholomew that some categories died off like
flies here— I told him the life of a suck was as short as the
life of a machine-gunner in the war.’
‘You didn’t.’
‘No, I didn’t,’ he admitted. ‘He was very pleasant. It
was a beautiful sight, he and I shaking hands there on the

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