Tender Is the Night

Here there was a well with the boarding around it dank and slipperyeven on the brightest days. She went up the stairs on the other side andinto the vegetable garden; she walked rather quickly; she liked to be act-ive, though at times she gave an impression of repose that was at oncestatic and evocative. This was because she knew few words and believedin none, and in the world she was rather silent, contributing just hershare of urbane humor with a precision that approached meagreness.But at the moment when strangers tended to grow uncomfortable in thepresence of this economy she would seize the topic and rush off with it,feverishly surprised with herself—then bring it back and relinquish it ab-ruptly, almost timidly, like an obedient retriever, having been adequateand something more.As she stood in the fuzzy green light of the vegetable garden, Dickcrossed the path ahead of her going to his work house. Nicole waited si-lently till he had passed; then she went on through lines of prospectivesalads to a little menagerie where pigeons and rabbits and a parrot madea medley of insolent noises at her. Descending to another ledge shereached a low, curved wall and looked down seven hundred feet to theMediterranean Sea.She stood in the ancient hill village of Tarmes. The villa and itsgrounds were made out of a row of peasant dwellings that abutted onthe cliff—five small houses had been combined to make the house andfour destroyed to make the garden. The exterior walls were untouchedso that from the road far below it was indistinguishable from the violetgray mass of the town.For a moment Nicole stood looking down at the Mediterranean butthere was nothing to do with that, even with her tireless hands. PresentlyDick came out of his one-room house carrying a telescope and lookedeast toward Cannes. In a moment Nicole swam into his field of vision,whereupon he disappeared into his house and came out with a mega-phone. He had many light mechanical devices."Nicole," he shouted, "...