Page 304 - tender-is-the-night

think I’ve got any real genius. But if I keep trying I may
write a good book.’ Fine dives have been made from flim-
sier spring-boards. The innumerable snubs of the past were
forgotten. Indeed, his success was founded psychologically
upon his duel with Tommy Barban, upon the basis of which,
as it withered in his memory, he had created, afresh, a new
self-respect.
Spotting Dick Diver the second day out, he eyed him
tentatively, then introduced himself in a friendly way and
sat down. Dick laid aside his reading and, after the few
minutes that it took to realize the change in McKisco, the
disappearance of the man’s annoying sense of inferiority,
found himself pleased to talk to him. McKisco was ‘well-
informed’ on a range of subjects wider than Goethe’s—it
was interesting to listen to the innumerable facile combina-
tions that he referred to as his opinions. They struck up an
acquaintance, and Dick had several meals with them. The
McKiscos had been invited to sit at the captain’s table but
with nascent snobbery they told Dick that they ‘couldn’t
stand that bunch.’
Violet was very grand now, decked out by the grand cou-
turières, charmed about the little discoveries that well-bred
girls make in their teens. She could, indeed, have learned
them from her mother in Boise but her soul was born dis-
mally in the small movie houses of Idaho, and she had had
no time for her mother. Now she ‘belonged’—together with
several million other people—and she was happy, though
her husband still shushed her when she grew violently na-
ïve.

304 Tender is the Night