Page 374 - tender-is-the-night

IV

The Divers would return to the Riviera, which was home.
The Villa Diana had been rented again for the summer, so
they divided the intervening time between German spas
and French cathedral towns where they were always happy
for a few days. Dick wrote a little with no particular meth-
od; it was one of those parts of life that is an awaiting; not
upon Nicole’s health, which seemed to thrive on travel, nor
upon work, but simply an awaiting. The factor that gave
purposefulness to the period was the children.
Dick’s interest in them increased with their ages, now
eleven and nine. He managed to reach them over the heads
of employees on the principle that both the forcing of
children and the fear of forcing them were inadequate sub-
stitutes for the long, careful watchfulness, the checking and
balancing and reckoning of accounts, to the end that there
should be no slip below a certain level of duty. He came to
know them much better than Nicole did, and in expansive
moods over the wines of several countries he talked and
played with them at length. They had that wistful charm,
almost sadness, peculiar to children who have learned ear-
ly not to cry or laugh with abandon; they were apparently
moved to no extremes of emotion, but content with a simple
regimentation and the simple pleasures allowed them. They
lived on the even tenor found advisable in the experience of

374 Tender is the Night