Page 78 - tender-is-the-night

man’s first year at West Point—that year during which no
cadet can resign and from which none ever recovers—made
a bet with Dick of five dollars.
His hands hanging naturally at his sides, the general
waited to be seated. Once his arms swung suddenly back-
ward like a jumper’s and Dick said, ‘Ah!’ supposing he had
lost control, but the general recovered and they breathed
again—the agony was nearly over, the garçon was pulling
out his chair ...
With a touch of fury the conqueror shot up his hand and
scratched his gray immaculate head.
‘You see,’ said Dick smugly, ‘I’m the only one.’
Rosemary was quite sure of it and Dick, realizing that he
never had a better audience, made the group into so bright
a unit that Rosemary felt an impatient disregard for all who
were not at their table. They had been two days in Paris but
actually they were still under the beach umbrella. When, as
at the ball of the Corps des Pages the night before, the sur-
roundings seemed formidable to Rosemary, who had yet to
attend a Mayfair party in Hollywood, Dick would bring the
scene within range by greeting a few people, a sort of selec-
tion—the Divers seemed to have a large acquaintance, but
it was always as if the person had not seen them for a long,
long time, and was utterly bowled over, ‘Why, where do you
KEEP yourselves?’—and then re-create the unity of his own
party by destroying the outsiders softly but permanently
with an ironic coup de grâce. Presently Rosemary seemed
to have known those people herself in some deplorable past,
and then got on to them, rejected them, discarded them.

78 Tender is the Night