Page 424 - tender-is-the-night

are alike in their breezy confidence; on the contrary, the ex-
igent womb of the twenties does not pull the outside world
centripetally around itself. The former are ages of insolence,
comparable the one to a young cadet, the other to a fighter
strutting after combat.
But whereas a girl of nineteen draws her confidence from
a surfeit of attention, a woman of twenty-nine is nourished
on subtler stuff. Desirous, she chooses her apéritifs wise-
ly, or, content, she enjoys the caviare of potential power.
Happily she does not seem, in either case, to anticipate the
subsequent years when her insight will often be blurred by
panic, by the fear of stopping or the fear of going on. But on
the landings of nineteen or twenty-nine she is pretty sure
that there are no bears in the hall.
Nicole did not want any vague spiritual romance—
she wanted an ‘affair”; she wanted a change. She realized,
thinking with Dick’s thoughts, that from a superficial view
it was a vulgar business to enter, without emotion, into an
indulgence that menaced all of them. On the other hand,
she blamed Dick for the immediate situation, and honestly
thought that such an experiment might have a therapeu-
tic value. All summer she had been stimulated by watching
people do exactly what they were tempted to do and pay no
penalty for it—moreover, in spite of her intention of no lon-
ger lying to herself, she preferred to consider that she was
merely feeling her way and that at any moment she could
withdraw... .
In the light shade Tommy caught her up in his white-
duck arms and pulled her around to him, looking at her

424 Tender is the Night