Tender is the night / Ночь нежна. Книга для чтения на английском языке

Nicole Diver, her brown back hanging from her pearls, was looking through a recipe book for chicken Maryland[36 - chicken Maryland – курица по-мэрилендски]. She was about twenty-four, Rosemary guessed – her face could have been described in terms of conventional prettiness, but the effect was that it had been made first on the heroic scale with strong structure and marking, as if the features and vividness of brow and coloring, everything we associate with temperament and character had been molded with a Rodinesque[37 - Rodinesque – прилагательное от Rodin – Огюст Роден (1840–1917), французский скульптор, один из основоположников импрессионизма в скульптуре] intention, and then chiseled away in the direction of prettiness to a point where a single slip would have irreparably diminished its force and quality.

With the mouth the sculptor had taken desperate chances – it was the cupid’s bow of a magazine cover, yet it shared the distinction of the rest.

“Are you here for a long time?” Nicole asked.

Her voice was low, almost harsh.

Suddenly Rosemary let the possibility enter her mind that they might stay another week.

“Not very long,” she answered vaguely. “We’ve been abroad a long time – we landed in Sicily in March and we’ve been slowly working our way north. I got pneumonia making a picture last January and I’ve been recuperating.

”

“Mercy![38 - Mercy! – (зд.) междометие, выражающее удивление и сожаление] How did that happen?”

“Well, it was from swimming,” Rosemary was rather reluctant at embarking upon personal revelations. “One day I happened to have the grippe and didn’t know it, and they were taking a scene where I dove into a canal in Venice. It was a very expensive set, so I had to dive and dive and dive all morning. Mother had a doctor right there, but it was no use – I got pneumonia.

” She changed the subject determinedly before they could speak. “Do you like it here – this place?”

“They have to like it,” said Abe North slowly. “They invented it.” He turned his noble head slowly so that his eyes rested with tenderness and affection on the two Divers.

“Oh, did you?”

“This is only the second season that the hotel’s been open in summer,” Nicole explained.