Page 80 - tender-is-the-night

nicer in that there were only seven people, about the limit of
a good party. Perhaps, too, the fact that she was new to their
world acted as a sort of catalytic agent to precipitate out all
their old reservations about one another. After the table
broke up, a waiter directed Rosemary back into the dark
hinterland of all French restaurants, where she looked up
a phone number by a dim orange bulb, and called Franco-
American Films. Sure, they had a print of ‘Daddy’s Girl’—it
was out for the moment, but they would run it off later in
the week for her at 341 Rue des Saintes Anges—ask for Mr.
Crowder.
The semi-booth gave on the vestiaire and as Rosemary
hung up the receiver she heard two low voices not five feet
from her on the other side of a row of coats.
‘—So you love me?’
‘Oh, DO I!’
It Was Nicole—Rosemary hesitated in the door of the
booth—then she heard Dick say:
‘I want you terribly—let’s go to the hotel now.’ Nicole
gave a little gasping sigh. For a moment the words conveyed
nothing at all to Rosemary—but the tone did. The vast se-
cretiveness of it vibrated to herself.
‘I want you.’
‘I’ll be at the hotel at four.’
Rosemary stood breathless as the voices moved away.
She was at first even astonished—she had seen them in their
relation to each other as people without personal exigen-
cies—as something cooler. Now a strong current of emotion
flowed through her, profound and unidentified. She did not

80 Tender is the Night