Page 438 - tender-is-the-night

that he had led her back to the world she had forfeited, she
had thought of him really as an inexhaustible energy, inca-
pable of fatigue—she forgot the troubles she caused him at
the moment when she forgot the troubles of her own that
had prompted her. That he no longer controlled her—did he
know that? Had he willed it all?—she felt as sorry for him as
she had sometimes felt for Abe North and his ignoble des-
tiny, sorry as for the helplessness of infants and the old.
She went up putting her arm around his shoulder and
touching their heads together said:
‘Don’t be sad.’
He looked at her coldly.
‘Don’t touch me!’ he said.
Confused she moved a few feet away.
‘Excuse me,’ he continued abstractedly. ‘I was just think-
ing what I thought of you—‘
‘Why not add the new classification to your book?’
‘I have thought of it—‘Furthermore and beyond the psy-
choses and the neuroses—‘’
‘I didn’t come over here to be disagreeable.’
‘Then why DID you come, Nicole? I can’t do anything for
you any more. I’m trying to save myself.’
‘From my contamination?’
‘Profession throws me in contact with questionable com-
pany sometimes.’
She wept with anger at the abuse.
‘You’re a coward! You’ve made a failure of your life, and
you want to blame it on me.’
While he did not answer she began to feel the old hypno-

438 Tender is the Night