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

long breath, flung himself into the shallows and began a stiff-armed batting of the Mediterranean, obviously intended to suggest a crawl—his breath exhausted he arose and looked around with an expression of surprise that he was still in sight of shore.
    â€œI haven’t learned to breathe yet. I never quite understood how they breathed.” He looked at Rosemary inquiringly.
    â€œI think you breathe out under water,” she explained. “And every fourth beat you roll your head over for air.”
    â€œThe breathing’s the hardest part for me. Shall we go to the raft?”
    The man with the leonine head lay stretched out upon the raft, which tipped back and forth with the motion of the water. As Mrs. McKisco reached for it a sudden tilt struck her arm up roughly, whereupon the man started up and pulled her on board.
    â€œI was afraid it hit you.” His voice was slow and shy; he had one of the saddest faces Rosemary had ever seen, the high cheek-bones of an Indian, a long upper lip, and enormous deep-set dark golden eyes. He had spoken out of the side of his mouth, as if he hoped his words would reach Mrs. McKisco by a circuitous and unobtrusive route; in a minute he had shoved off into the water and his long body lay motionless toward shore.
    Rosemary and Mrs. McKisco watched him. When he had exhausted his momentum he abruptly bent double, his thinthighs rose above the surface, and he disappeared totally, leaving scarcely a fleck of foam behind.
    â€œHe’s a good swimmer,” Rosemary said.
    Mrs. McKisco’s answer came with surprising violence.
    â€œWell, he’s a rotten musician.” She turned to her husband, who after two unsuccessful attempts had managed to climb on the raft, and having attained his balance was trying to make some kind of compensatory flourish, achieving only an extra stagger. “I was just saying that Abe North may be a good swimmer but he’s a rotten musician.”
    â€œYes,” agreed McKisco, grudgingly. Obviously he had created his wife’s world, and allowed her few liberties in it.
    â€œAntheil’s my man.” 2 Mrs. McKisco turned challengingly to Rosemary, “Antheil and Joyce. I don’t suppose you ever hear much about those sort of people in Hollywood, but my husband wrote the first criticism of
Ulysses
that ever appeared in America.”
    â€œI wish I had a cigarette,” said McKisco calmly. “That’s more important to me just now.”
    â€œHe’s got insides—don’t you think so, Albert?”
    Her voice faded off suddenly. The woman of the pearls had joined her two children in the water, and now Abe North came up under one of them like a volcanic island, raising him on his shoulders. The child yelled with fear and delight and the woman watched with a lovely peace, without a smile.
    â€œIs that his wife?” Rosemary asked.
    â€œNo, that’s Mrs. Diver. They’re not at the hotel.” Her eyes, photographic, did not move from the woman’s face. After a moment she turned vehemently to Rosemary.
    â€œHave you been abroad before?”
    â€œYes—I went to school in Paris.”
    â€œOh! Well then you probably know that if you want to enjoy yourself here the thing is to get to know some real French families. What do these people get out of it?” She pointed her left shoulder toward shore. “They just stick around with each other in little cliques. Of course, we had letters of introduction and met all the best French artists and writers in Paris. That made it very nice.”
    â€œI should think so.”
    â€œMy husband is finishing his first novel, you see.”
    Rosemary said: “Oh, he is?” She was not thinking anything special, except wondering whether her mother had got to sleep in this heat.
    â€œIt’s on the idea of
Ulysses
,” continued Mrs. McKisco. “Only instead of taking twenty-four hours my husband takes a hundred