Page 57 - tender-is-the-night

‘I wanted to know all of you too—especially you. I told
you I fell in love with you the first time I saw you.’
She was right going at it that way. But the space between
heaven and earth had cooled his mind, destroyed the im-
pulsiveness that had led him to bring her here, and made
him aware of the too obvious appeal, the struggle with an
unrehearsed scene and unfamiliar words.
He tried now to make her want to go back to the house
and it was difficult, and he did not quite want to lose her.
She felt only the draft blowing as he joked with her good-
humoredly.
‘You don’t know what you want. You go and ask your
mother what you want.’
She was stricken. She touched him, feeling the smooth
cloth of his dark coat like a chasuble. She seemed about to
fall to her knees— from that position she delivered her last
shot.
‘I think you’re the most wonderful person I ever met—
except my mother.’
‘You have romantic eyes.’
His laughter swept them on up toward the terrace where
he delivered her to Nicole... .
Too soon it had become time to go and the Divers helped
them all to go quickly. In the Divers’ big Isotta there would
be Tommy Barban and his baggage—he was spending the
night at the hotel to catch an early train—with Mrs. Abrams,
the McKiscos and Campion. Earl Brady was going to drop
Rosemary and her mother on his way to Monte Carlo, and
Royal Dumphry rode with them because the Divers’ car was

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