Page 61 - tender-is-the-night

faintly a song like rising smoke, like a hymn, very remote in
time and far away. Their children slept, their gate was shut
for the night.
She went inside and dressing in a light gown and espa-
drilles went out her window again and along the continuous
terrace toward the front door, going fast since she found
that other private rooms, exuding sleep, gave upon it. She
stopped at the sight of a figure seated on the wide white
stairway of the formal entrance—then she saw that it was
Luis Campion and that he was weeping.
He was weeping hard and quietly and shaking in the
same parts as a weeping woman. A scene in a role she had
played last year swept over her irresistibly and advancing
she touched him on the shoulder. He gave a little yelp before
he recognized her.
‘What is it?’ Her eyes were level and kind and not slanted
into him with hard curiosity. ‘Can I help you?’
‘Nobody can help me. I knew it. I have only myself to
blame. It’s always the same.’
‘What is it—do you want to tell me?’
He looked at her to see.
‘No,’ he decided. ‘When you’re older you’ll know what
people who love suffer. The agony. It’s better to be cold and
young than to love. It’s happened to me before but never like
this—so accidental—just when everything was going well.’
His face was repulsive in the quickening light. Not by a
flicker of her personality, a movement of the smallest mus-
cle, did she betray her sudden disgust with whatever it was.
But Campion’s sensitivity realized it and he changed the

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