Free Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald Page A

modesty of possession she responded to each salvo of amusement by bending closer over her list.
    The man of the monocle and bottle spoke suddenly out of the sky above Rosemary.
    â€œYou are a ripping swimmer.”
    She demurred.
    â€œJolly good. My name is Campion. Here is a lady who says she saw you in Sorrento last week and knows who you are and would so like to meet you.”
    Glancing around with concealed annoyance Rosemary saw the untanned people were waiting. Reluctantly she got up and went over to them.
    â€œMrs. Abrams—Mrs. McKisco—Mr. McKisco—Mr. Dumphry——”
    â€œWe know who you are,” spoke up the woman in evening dress. “You’re Rosemary Hoyt and I recognized you in Sorrento and asked the hotel clerk and we all think you’re perfectly marvellous and we want to know why you’re not back in America making another marvellous moving picture.”
    They made a superfluous gesture of moving over for her. The woman who had recognized her was not a Jewess, despite her name. She was one of those elderly “good sports” preserved by an imperviousness to experience and a good digestion into another generation.
    â€œWe wanted to warn you about getting burned the first day,” she continued cheerily, “because
your
skin is important, but there seems to be so darn much formality on this beach that we didn’t know whether you’d mind.”
II
    â€œW E thought maybe you were in the plot,” said Mrs. McKisco. She was a shabby-eyed, pretty young woman with a disheartening intensity. “We don’t know who’s in the plot and who isn’t. One man my husband had been particularly nice to turned out to be a chief character—practically the assistant hero.”
    â€œThe plot?” inquired Rosemary, half understanding. “Is there a plot?”
    â€œMy dear, we don’t
know
,” said Mrs. Abrams, with a convulsive, stout woman’s chuckle. “We’re not in it. We’re the gallery.”
    Mr. Dumphry, a tow-headed, effeminate young man, remarked: “Mama Abrams is a plot in herself,” and Campion shook his monocle at him, saying: “Now, Royal, don’t be too ghastly for words.” Rosemary looked at them all uncomfortably, wishing her mother had come down here with her. She did not like these people, especially in her immediate comparison of them with those who had interested her at the other end of the beach. Her mother’s modest but compact social gift got them out of unwelcome situations swiftly and firmly. But Rosemary had been a celebrity for only six months, and sometimes the French manners of her early adolescence and the democratic manners of America, these latter superimposed, made a certain confusion and let her in for just such things.
    Mr. McKisco, a scrawny, freckle-and-red man of thirty, did not find the topic of the “plot” amusing. He had been staring at the sea—now after a swift glance at his wife he turned to Rosemary and demanded aggressively:
    â€œBeen here long?”
    â€œOnly a day.”
    â€œOh.”
    Evidently feeling that the subject had been thoroughly changed, he looked in turn at the others.
    â€œGoing to stay all summer?” asked Mrs. McKisco, innocently. “If you do you can watch the plot unfold.”
    â€œFor God’s sake, Violet, drop the subject!” exploded her husband. “Get a new joke, for God’s sake!”
    Mrs. McKisco swayed toward Mrs. Abrams and breathed audibly:
    â€œHe’s nervous.”
    â€œI’m not nervous,” disagreed McKisco. “It just happens I’m not nervous at all.”
    He was burning visibly—a grayish flush had spread over his face, dissolving all his expressions into a vast ineffectuality. Suddenly remotely conscious of his condition he got up to go in the water, followed by his wife, and seizing the opportunity Rosemary followed.
    Mr. McKisco drew a