Page 417 - tender-is-the-night

They came up at the moment, and Nicole gave ear to
a request that she overrule the governess on a swimming
point.
‘No,’ Dick answered for her. ‘What Mademoiselle says
must go.’
Agreeing that one must support delegated authority, Ni-
cole refused their request, whereupon Mary—who in the
manner of an Anita Loos’ heroine had dealings only with
Faits Accomplis, who indeed could not have house-broken
a French poodle puppy—regarded Dick as though he were
guilty of a most flagrant bullying. Dick, chafed by the tire-
some performance, inquired with mock solicitude:
‘How are your children—and their aunts?’
Mary did not answer; she left them, first draping a sym-
pathetic hand over Lanier’s reluctant head. After she had
gone Dick said: ‘When I think of the time I spent working
over her.’
‘I like her,’ said Nicole.
Dick’s bitterness had surprised Rosemary, who had
thought of him as all-forgiving, all-comprehending. Sud-
denly she recalled what it was she had heard about him. In
conversation with some State Department people on the
boat,—Europeanized Americans who had reached a po-
sition where they could scarcely have been said to belong
to any nation at all, at least not to any great power though
perhaps to a Balkan-like state composed of similar citi-
zens—the name of the ubiquitously renowned Baby Warren
had occurred and it was remarked that Baby’s younger sis-
ter had thrown herself away on a dissipated doctor. ‘He’s not

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