“I’m glad you did.”
“I came to meet you at your studio—I’m out in Passy across the way from it. I thought maybe we’d ride around through the Bois.”
“Oh, I only stayed there a minute! I’m so sorry.”
A silence.
“Rosemary.”
“Yes, Dick.”
“Look, I’m in an extraordinary condition about you.
When a child can disturb a middle-aged gent—things get difficult.”
“You’re not middle-aged, Dick—you’re the youngest person in the world.”
“Rosemary?”
Silence while he stared at a shelf that held the humbler poisons of France—bottles of Otard, Rhum St. James, Marie Brizzard, Punch Orangeade, Andre Fernet Blanco, Cherry Rochet, and Armagnac.
“Are you alone?”
—Do you mind if I pull down the curtain?
“Who do you think I’d be with?”
“That’s the state I’m in.
I’d like to be with you now.”
Silence, then a sigh and an answer.
“I wish you were with me now.”
There was the hotel room where she lay behind a telephone number, and little gusts of music wailed around her—
“And two—for tea.
And me for you,
And you for me
Alow-own.”
There was the remembered dust of powder over her tan—when he kissed her face it was damp around the corners of her hair; there was the flash of a white face under his own, the arc of a shoulder.
“It’s impossible,” he said to himself.
In a minute he was out in the street marching along toward the Muette, or away from it, his small brief-case still in his hand, his gold-headed stick held at a sword-like angle.
Rosemary returned to her desk and finished a letter to her mother.
“—I only saw him for a little while but I thought he was wonderful looking.
I fell in love with him (Of course I Do Love Dick Best but you know what I mean).
He really is going to direct the picture and is leaving immediately for Hollywood, and I think we ought to leave, too.
Collis Clay has been here.
I like him all right but have not seen much of him because of the Divers, who really are divine, about the Nicest People I ever Knew.
I am feeling not very well to-day and am taking the Medicine, though see No need for it.
I’m not even Going to Try to tell you All that’s Happened until I see YOU!!!
So when you get this letter WIRE, WIRE, WIRE! Are you coming north or shall I come south with the Divers?”
At six Dick called Nicole.
“Have you any special plans?” he asked.
“Would you like to do something quiet—dinner at the hotel and then a play?”
“Would you?
I’ll do whatever you want.
I phoned Rosemary a while ago and she’s having dinner in her room.
I think this upset all of us, don’t you?”
“It didn’t upset me,” he objected.
“Darling, unless you’re physically tired let’s do something.
Otherwise we’ll get south and spend a week wondering why we didn’t see Boucher.
It’s better than brooding—”
This was a blunder and Nicole took him up sharply.
“Brooding about what?”
“About Maria Wallis.”
She agreed to go to a play.