Page 95 - tender-is-the-night

Suddenly she came toward him, her youth vanishing as
she passed inside the focus of his eyes and he had kissed her
breathlessly as if she were any age at all. Then she lay back
against his arm and sighed.
‘I’ve decided to give you up,’ she said.
Dick started—had he said anything to imply that she
possessed any part of him?
‘But that’s very mean,’ he managed to say lightly, ‘just
when I was getting interested.’
‘I’ve loved you so—‘ As if it had been for years. She was
weeping a little now. ‘I’ve loved you so-o-o.’
Then he should have laughed, but he heard himself say-
ing, ‘Not only are you beautiful but you are somehow on the
grand scale. Everything you do, like pretending to be in love
or pretending to be shy gets across.’
In the dark cave of the taxi, fragrant with the perfume
Rosemary had bought with Nicole, she came close again,
clinging to him. He kissed her without enjoying it. He knew
that there was passion there, but there was no shadow of it
in her eyes or on her mouth; there was a faint spray of cham-
pagne on her breath. She clung nearer desperately and once
more he kissed her and was chilled by the innocence of her
kiss, by the glance that at the moment of contact looked be-
yond him out into the darkness of the night, the darkness
of the world. She did not know yet that splendor is some-
thing in the heart; at the moment when she realized that
and melted into the passion of the universe he could take
her without question or regret.
Her room in the hotel was diagonally across from theirs

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