Im not ashamed about last nightit was the nicest thing that ever happened to me and even if I never saw you again, Mon Capitaine, I would be glad it happened. That was disarming enoughthe heavy shade of Dohmler retreated as Dick opened the second envelope: DEAR DOCTOR DIVER: I phoned but you were out. I wonder if I may ask you a great big favor. Unforeseen circumstances call me back to Paris, and I find I can make better time by way of Lausanne. Can you let Nicole ride as far as Zurich with you, since you are going back Monday? and drop her at the sanitarium? Is this too much to ask? 230 Tender is the Night Sincerely, BETH EVAN WARREN. Dick was furiousMiss Warren had known he had a bicycle with him; yet she had so phrased her note that it was impossible to refuse. Throw us together! Sweet propinquity and the Warren money!

He was wrong; Baby Warren had no such intentions. She had looked Dick over with worldly eyes, she had measured him with the warped rule of an Anglophile and found him wantingin spite of the fact that she found him toothsome. But for her he was too intellectual and she pigeonholed him with a shabby-snobby crowd she had once known in Londonhe put himself out too much to be really of the correct stuff. She could not see how he could be made into her idea of an aristocrat. In addition to that he was stubbornshe had seen him leave her conversation and get down behind his eyes in that odd way that people did, half a dozen times. She had not liked Nicoles free and easy manner as a child and now she was sensibly habituated to thinking of her as a gone coon; and anyhow Doctor Diver was not the sort of medical man she could envisage in the family. She only wanted to use him innocently as a conve-

But her request had the effect that Dick assumed she desired. A ride in a train can be a terrible, heavy-hearted or comic thing; it can be a trial flight; it can be a prefiguration of another journey just as a given day with a friend can be long, from the taste of hurry in the morning up to the reFree eBooks at Planet eBook.com 231 alization of both being hungry and taking food together. Then comes the afternoon with the journey fading and dying, but quickening again at the end. Dick was sad to see Nicoles meagre joy; yet it was a relief for her, going back to the only home she knew. They made no love that day, but when he left her outside the sad door on the Zurichsee and she turned and looked at him he knew her problem was one they had together for good now. 232 Tender is the Night X

In Zurich in September Doctor Diver had tea with Baby Warren. I think its ill advised, she said, Im not sure I truly understand your motives. Dont lets be unpleasant. After all Im Nicoles sister. That doesnt give you the right to be unpleasant. It irritated Dick that he knew so much that he could not tell her. Nicoles rich, but that doesnt make me an adventurer. Thats just it, complained Baby stubbornly. Nicoles rich. Just how much money has she got? he asked. She started; and with a silent laugh he continued, You see how silly this is? Id rather talk to some man in your family Everythings been left to me, she persisted. It isnt we think youre an adventurer. We dont know who you are. Im a doctor of medicine, he said. My father is a clergyman, now retired. We lived in Buffalo and my past is open to investigation. I went to New Haven; afterward I was a Rhodes scholar. My great-grandfather was Governor of North Carolina and Im a direct descendant of Mad Anthony Wayne.