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

The hostess – she was another tall rich American girl, promenading insouciantly upon the national prosperity – was asking Dick innumerable questions about Gausse’s Hôtel, whither she evidently wanted to come, and battering persistently against his reluctance. Rosemary’s presence reminded her that she had been recalcitrant as a hostess and glancing about she said: “Have you met anyone amusing, have you met Mr. —” Her eyes groped for a male who might interest Rosemary, but Dick said they must go.

They left immediately, moving over the brief threshold of the future to the sudden past of the stone façade without.

“Wasn’t it terrible?” he said.

“Terrible,” she echoed obediently.

“Rosemary?”

She murmured, “What?” in an awed voice.

“I feel terribly about this.”

She was shaken with audibly painful sobs. “Have you got a handkerchief?” she faltered. But there was little time to cry, and lovers now they fell ravenously on the quick seconds while outside the taxi windows the green and cream twilight faded, and the fire-red, gas-blue, ghost-green signs began to shine smokily through the tranquil rain.

It was nearly six, the streets were in movement, the bistros gleamed, the Place de la Concorde[147 - Place de la Concorde – (фр.) площадь Согласия] moved by in pink majesty as the cab turned north.

They looked at each other at last, murmuring names that were a spell. Softly the two names lingered on the air, died away more slowly than other words, other names, slower than music in the mind.

“I don’t know what came over me last night,” Rosemary said. “That glass of champagne? I’ve never done anything like that before.”

“You simply said you loved me.”

“I do love you – I can’t change that.” It was time for Rosemary to cry, so she cried a little in her handkerchief.

“I’m afraid I’m in love with you,” said Dick, “and that’s not the best thing that could happen.

”

Again the names – then they lurched together as if the taxi had swung them. Her breasts crushed flat against him, her mouth was all new and warm, owned in common. They stopped thinking with an almost painful relief, stopped seeing; they only breathed and sought each other. They were both in the gray gentle world of a mild hangover of fatigue when the nerves relax in bunches like piano strings, and crackle suddenly like wicker chairs.