Page 423 - tender-is-the-night

VIII

She bathed and anointed herself and covered her body
with a layer of powder, while her toes crunched another pile
on a bath towel. She looked microscopically at the lines of
her flanks, wondering how soon the fine, slim edifice would
begin to sink squat and earthward. In about six years, but
now I’ll do—in fact I’ll do as well as any one I know.
She was not exaggerating. The only physical disparity be-
tween Nicole at present and the Nicole of five years before
was simply that she was no longer a young girl. But she was
enough ridden by the current youth worship, the moving
pictures with their myriad faces of girl-children, bland-
ly represented as carrying on the work and wisdom of the
world, to feel a jealousy of youth.
She put on the first ankle-length day dress that she had
owned for many years, and crossed herself reverently with
Chanel Sixteen. When Tommy drove up at one o’clock she
had made her person into the trimmest of gardens.
How good to have things like this, to be worshipped
again, to pretend to have a mystery! She had lost two of the
great arrogant years in the life of a pretty girl—now she felt
like making up for them; she greeted Tommy as if he were
one of many men at her feet, walking ahead of him instead
of beside him as they crossed the garden toward the market
umbrella. Attractive women of nineteen and of twenty-nine

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