In the square, as they came out, a suspended mass of gasoline exhaust cooked slowly in the July sun. It was a terrible thing — unlike pure heat it held no promise of rural escape but suggested only roads choked with the same foul¹ asthma². During their luncheon³, outdoors, across from the Luxembourg Gardens, Rosemary had cramps⁴ and felt fretful and full of impatient lassitude — it was the foretaste of this that had inspired her self-accusation of selfishness in the station.

Dick had no suspicion of the sharpness of the change; he was profoundly unhappy and the subsequent increase of egotism tended momentarily to blind him to what was going on round about him, and deprive him of the long ground-swell of imagination that he counted on for his judgments⁵.

After Mary North left them, accompanied by the Italian singing teacher who had joined them for coffee and was taking her to her train, Rosemary, too, stood up, bound for an engagement at her studio: “meet some officials.”

“And oh —” she proposed “— if Collis Clay, that Southern boy — if he comes while you are still sitting here, just tell him I couldn’t wait; tell him to call me to-morrow.”

Too insouciant⁶, in reaction from the late disturbance⁷, she had assumed the privileges of a child — the result being to remind the Divers⁸ of their exclusive love for their own children; Rosemary was sharply rebuked⁹ in a short passage between the women: “You’d better leave the message with a waiter,” Nicole’s voice was stern and unmodulated, “we’re leaving immediately.”

Rosemary got it, took it without

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