Page 328 - tender-is-the-night

ing his eye would catch on something, so that spirit instead
of imagination could carry on for an hour. But there was
nothing and after a moment he turned back to Collis. He
had told Collis some of his current notions, and he was
bored with his audience’s short memory and lack of re-
sponse. After half an hour of Collis he felt a distinct lesion
of his own vitality.
They drank a bottle of Italian mousseaux, and Dick be-
came pale and somewhat noisy. He called the orchestra
leader over to their table; this was a Bahama Negro, conceit-
ed and unpleasant, and in a few minutes there was a row.
‘You asked me to sit down.’
‘All right. And I gave you fifty lire, didn’t I?’
‘All right. All right. All right.’
‘All right, I gave you fifty lire, didn’t I? Then you come up
and asked me to put some more in the horn!’
‘You asked me to sit down, didn’t you? Didn’t you?’
‘I asked you to sit down but I gave you fifty lire, didn’t
I?’
‘All right. All right.’
The Negro got up sourly and went away, leaving Dick in a
still more evil humor. But he saw a girl smiling at him from
across the room and immediately the pale Roman shapes
around him receded into decent, humble perspective. She
was a young English girl, with blonde hair and a healthy,
pretty English face and she smiled at him again with an in-
vitation he understood, that denied the flesh even in the act
of tendering it.
‘There’s a quick trick or else I don’t know bridge,’ said

328 Tender is the Night