“We ought never to have given up waxed mustaches,” said Abe. “Nevertheless Dick isn’t the ONLY man with repose —”
“Oh, yes, I am.”
“— but he may be the only sober man with repose.”
A well-dressed American had come in with two women who swooped2 and fluttered unselfconsciously around a table. Suddenly, he perceived that he was being watched — whereupon his hand rose spasmodically and arranged a phantom3 bulge4 in his necktie. In another unseated party a man endlessly patted his shaven cheek with his palm, and his companion mechanically raised and lowered the stub of a cold cigar. The luckier ones fingered eyeglasses and facial hair, the unequipped stroked blank mouths, or even pulled desperately5 at the lobes6 of their ears.
A well-known general came in, and Abe, counting on the man’s first year at West Point — that year during which no cadet can resign and from which none ever recovers — made a bet with Dick of five dollars.
His hands hanging naturally at his sides, the general waited to be seated. Once his arms swung suddenly backward like a jumper’s and Dick said, “Ah!” supposing he had lost control, but the general recovered and they breathed again — the agony was nearly over, the gar?on was pulling out his chair . . .
With a touch of fury the conqueror7 shot up his hand and scratched his gray immaculate head.
“You see,” said Dick smugly, “I’m the only one.”
Rosemary was quite sure of it and Dick, realizing that he never had a better audience, made the group into so bright a unit that Rosemary felt an impatient disregard for all who were not at their table. They had been two days in Paris but actually they were still under the beach umbrella. When, as at the ball of the Corps8 des Pages the night before, the surroundings seemed formidable to Rosemary, who had yet to attend a Mayfair party in Hollywood, Dick would bring the scene within range by greeting a few people, a sort of selection — the Divers9 seemed to have a large acquaintance, but it was always as if the person had not seen them for a long, long time, and was utterly10 bowled over, “Why, where do you KEEP yourselves?”— and then re-create the unity11 of his own party by destroying the outsiders softly but permanently12 with an ironic13 coup14 de grace. Presently Rosemary seemed to have known those people herself in some deplorable past, and then got on to them, rejected them, discarded them.
Their own party was overwhelmingly American and sometimes scarcely American at all. It was themselves he gave back to them, blurred15 by the compromises of how many years.
Into the dark, smoky restaurant, smelling of the rich raw foods on the buffet16, slid Nicole’s sky-blue suit like a stray segment of the weather outside. Seeing from their eyes how beautiful she was, she thanked them with a smile of radiant appreciation17. They were all very nice people for a while, very courteous18 and all that. Then they grew tired of it and they were funny and bitter, and finally they made a lot of plans. They laughed at things that they would not remember clearly afterward19 — laughed a lot and the men drank three bottles of wine. The trio of women at the table were representative of the enormous flux20 of American life. Nicole was the granddaughter of a self-made American capitalist and the granddaughter of a Count of the House of Lippe Weissenfeld. Mary North was the daughter of a journeyman paper-hanger and a descendant of President Tyler. Rosemary was from the middle of the middle class, catapulted by her mother onto the uncharted heights of Hollywood. Their point of resemblance to each other and their difference from so many American women, lay in the fact that they were all happy to exist in a man’s world — they preserved their individuality through men and not by opposition21 to them. They would all three have made alternatively good courtesans or good wives not by the accident of birth but through the greater accident of finding their man or not finding him.
So Rosemary found it a pleasant party, that luncheon22, nicer in that there were only seven people, about the limit of a good party. Perhaps, too, the fact that she was new to their world acted as a sort of catalytic agent to precipitate23 out all their old reservations about one another. After the table broke up, a waiter directed Rosemary back into the dark hinterland of all French restaurants, where she looked up a phone number by a dim orange bulb, and called Franco-American Films. Sure, they had a print of “Daddy’s Girl”— it was out for the moment, but they would run it off later in the week for her at 341 Rue24 des Saintes Anges — ask for Mr. Crowder.
The semi-booth gave on the vestiaire and as Rosemary hung up the receiver she heard two low voices not five feet from her on the other side of a row of coats.
“— So you love me?”
“Oh, DO I!”
It Was Nicole — Rosemary hesitated in the door of the booth — then she heard Dick say:
“I want you terribly — let’s go to the hotel now.” Nicole gave a little gasping25 sigh. For a moment the words conveyed nothing at all to Rosemary — but the tone did. The vast secretiveness of it vibrated to herself.
“I want you.”
“I’ll be at the hotel at four.”
Rosemary stood breathless as the voices moved away. She was at first even astonished — she had seen them in their relation to each other as people without personal exigencies26 — as something cooler. Now a strong current of emotion flowed through her, profound and unidentified. She did not know whether she was attracted or repelled27, but only that she was deeply moved. It made her feel very alone as she went back into the restaurant, but it was touching28 to look in upon, and the passionate29 gratitude30 of Nicole’s “Oh, DO I!” echoed in her mind. The particular mood of the passage she had witnessed lay ahead of her; but however far she was from it her stomach told her it was all right — she had none of the aversion she had felt in the playing of certain love scenes in pictures.
Being far away from it she nevertheless irrevocably participated in it now, and shopping with Nicole she was much more conscious of the assignation than Nicole herself. She looked at Nicole in a new way, estimating her attractions. Certainly she was the most attractive woman Rosemary had ever met — with her hardness, her devotions and loyalties31, and a certain elusiveness32, which Rosemary, thinking now through her mother’s middle-class mind, associated with her attitude about money. Rosemary spent money she had earned — she was here in Europe due to the fact that she had gone in the pool six times that January day with her temperature roving from 99° in the early morning to 103°, when her mother stopped it.
With Nicole’s help Rosemary bought two dresses and two hats and four pairs of shoes with her money. Nicole bought from a great list that ran two pages, and bought the things in the windows besides. Everything she liked that she couldn’t possibly use herself, she bought as a present for a friend. She bought colored beads33, folding beach cushions, artificial flowers, honey, a guest bed, bags, scarfs, love birds, miniatures for a doll’s house and three yards of some new cloth the color of prawns34. She bought a dozen bathing suits, a rubber alligator35, a travelling chess set of gold and ivory, big linen36 handkerchiefs for Abe, two chamois leather jackets of kingfisher blue and burning bush from Hermes — bought all these things not a bit like a high-class courtesan buying underwear and jewels, which were after all professional equipment and insurance — but with an entirely37 different point of view. Nicole was the product of much ingenuity38 and toil39. For her sake trains began their run at Chicago and traversed the round belly40 of the continent to California; chicle factories fumed41 and link belts grew link by link in factories; men mixed toothpaste in vats42 and drew mouthwash out of copper43 hogsheads; girls canned tomatoes quickly in August or worked rudely at the Five-and-Tens on Christmas Eve; half-breed Indians toiled44 on Brazilian coffee plantations45 and dreamers were muscled out of patent rights in new tractors — these were some of the people who gave a tithe46 to Nicole, and as the whole system swayed and thundered onward47 it lent a feverish48 bloom to such processes of hers as wholesale49 buying, like the flush of a fireman’s face holding his post before a spreading blaze. She illustrated50 very simple principles, containing in herself her own doom51, but illustrated them so accurately52 that there was grace in the procedure, and presently Rosemary would try to imitate it.
It was almost four. Nicole stood in a shop with a love bird on her shoulder, and had one of her infrequent outbursts of speech.
“Well, what if you hadn’t gone in that pool that day — I sometimes wonder about such things. Just before the war we were in Berlin — I was thirteen, it was just before Mother died. My sister was going to a court ball and she had three of the royal princes on her dance card, all arranged by a chamberlain and everything. Half an hour before she was going to start she had a side ache and a high fever. The doctor said it was appendicitis53 and she ought to be operated on. But Mother had her plans made, so Baby went to the ball and danced till two with an ice pack strapped54 on under her evening dress. She was operated on at seven o’clock next morning.”
It was good to be hard, then; all nice people were hard on themselves. But it was four o’clock and Rosemary kept thinking of Dick waiting for Nicole now at the hotel. She must go there, she must not make him wait for her. She kept thinking, “Why don’t you go?” and then suddenly, “Or let me go if you don’t want to.” But Nicole went to one more place to buy corsages for them both and sent one to Mary North. Only then she seemed to remember and with sudden abstraction she signalled for a taxi.
“Good-by,” said Nicole. “We had fun, didn’t we?”
“Loads of fun,” said Rosemary. It was more difficult than she thought and her whole self protested as Nicole drove away.
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1
repose
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| v.(使)休息；n.安息 | |
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2
swooped
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| 俯冲，猛冲( swoop的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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phantom
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| n.幻影，虚位，幽灵；adj.错觉的，幻影的，幽灵的 | |
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bulge
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| n.突出，膨胀，激增；vt.突出，膨胀 | |
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desperately
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| adv.极度渴望地，绝望地，孤注一掷地 | |
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6
lobes
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| n.耳垂( lobe的名词复数 )；（器官的）叶；肺叶；脑叶 | |
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7
conqueror
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| n.征服者，胜利者 | |
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8
corps
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| n.(通信等兵种的)部队；(同类作的)一组 | |
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9
divers
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| adj.不同的；种种的 | |
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10
utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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unity
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| n.团结，联合，统一；和睦，协调 | |
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permanently
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| adv.永恒地，永久地，固定不变地 | |
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13
ironic
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| adj.讽刺的，有讽刺意味的，出乎意料的 | |
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14
coup
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| n.政变；突然而成功的行动 | |
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15
blurred
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| v.（使）变模糊( blur的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）难以区分；模模糊糊；迷离 | |
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16
buffet
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| n.自助餐；饮食柜台；餐台 | |
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17
appreciation
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| n.评价；欣赏；感谢；领会，理解；价格上涨 | |
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18
courteous
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| adj.彬彬有礼的，客气的 | |
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19
afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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flux
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| n.流动；不断的改变 | |
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opposition
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| n.反对，敌对 | |
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22
luncheon
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| n.午宴，午餐，便宴 | |
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23
precipitate
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| adj.突如其来的；vt.使突然发生；n.沉淀物 | |
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24
rue
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| n.懊悔，芸香，后悔；v.后悔，悲伤，懊悔 | |
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25
gasping
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| adj. 气喘的, 痉挛的 动词gasp的现在分词 | |
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26
exigencies
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| n.急切需要 | |
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repelled
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| v.击退( repel的过去式和过去分词 )；使厌恶；排斥；推开 | |
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28
touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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29
passionate
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
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30
gratitude
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| adj.感激，感谢 | |
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31
loyalties
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| n.忠诚( loyalty的名词复数 )；忠心；忠于…感情；要忠于…的强烈感情 | |
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32
elusiveness
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| 狡诈 | |
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33
beads
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| n.（空心）小珠子( bead的名词复数 )；水珠；珠子项链 | |
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34
prawns
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| n.对虾，明虾( prawn的名词复数 ) | |
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35
alligator
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| n.短吻鳄(一种鳄鱼) | |
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36
linen
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| n.亚麻布，亚麻线，亚麻制品；adj.亚麻布制的，亚麻的 | |
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37
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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38
ingenuity
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| n.别出心裁；善于发明创造 | |
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39
toil
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| vi.辛劳工作，艰难地行动；n.苦工，难事 | |
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40
belly
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| n.肚子，腹部；(像肚子一样)鼓起的部分，膛 | |
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41
fumed
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| 愤怒( fume的过去式和过去分词 )； 大怒； 发怒； 冒烟 | |
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42
vats
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| varieties 变化，多样性，种类 | |
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43
copper
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| n.铜；铜币；铜器；adj.铜(制)的；(紫)铜色的 | |
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44
toiled
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| 长时间或辛苦地工作( toil的过去式和过去分词 )； 艰难缓慢地移动，跋涉 | |
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45
plantations
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| n.种植园，大农场( plantation的名词复数 ) | |
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46
tithe
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| n.十分之一税；v.课什一税，缴什一税 | |
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47
onward
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| adj.向前的，前进的；adv.向前，前进，在先 | |
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48
feverish
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| adj.发烧的，狂热的，兴奋的 | |
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49
wholesale
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| n.批发；adv.以批发方式；vt.批发，成批出售 | |
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50
illustrated
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| adj. 有插图的，列举的 动词illustrate的过去式和过去分词 | |
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51
doom
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| n.厄运，劫数；v.注定，命定 | |
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52
accurately
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| adv.准确地，精确地 | |
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53
appendicitis
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| n.阑尾炎，盲肠炎 | |
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54
strapped
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| adj.用皮带捆住的，用皮带装饰的；身无分文的；缺钱；手头紧v.用皮带捆扎(strap的过去式和过去分词)；用皮带抽打；包扎；给…打绷带 | |
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