Tender Is The Night
“You’re a fetching kid, but I couldn’t fall in love.”
“You won’t give me a chance.”
“What!”
The impertinence, the right to invade implied, astounded him. Short of anarchy, he could not think of any chance that Nicole Warren deserved.
“Give me a chance now.”
The voice fell low, sank into her breast and stretched the tight bodice over her heart as she came up close. He felt the young lips, her body sighing in relief against the arm growing stronger to hold her. There were now no more plans than if Dick had arbitrarily made some dissoluble mixture, with atoms joined and inseparable; you could throw it all out but never again could they fit back into atomic scale. As he held her and tasted her, and as she curved further and further toward him, with her own lips, new to herself, drowned and engulfed in love, yet solaced and triumphant, he was thankful to have an existence at all, if only as a reflection in her eyes.
“My God,” he gasped, “you’re fun to kiss.”
That was talk, but Nicole had a better hold on him now and she held it; she turned coquette and walked away, leaving him as suspended as in the funicular of the afternoon. She felt: There, that’ll show him, how conceited; how he could do with me; oh, wasn’t it wonderful! I’ve got him, he’s mine. Now in the sequence came flight, but it was all so sweet and new that she dawdled, wanting to draw it all in.
