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agreed placidly.
    “I want
to give a really BAD party. I mean it. I want to give a party where there’s a
brawl and seductions and people going home with their feelings hurt and women
passed out in the cabinet de toilette. You wait and see.”
    He went
back into his house and Nicole saw that one of his most characteristic moods
was upon him, the excitement that swept everyone up into it and was inevitably
followed by his own form of melancholy, which he never displayed but at which
she guessed. This excitement about things reached an
intensity out of proportion to their importance, generating a really
extraordinary virtuosity with people. Save among a few of the tough-minded and
perennially suspicious, he had the power of arousing a fascinated and
uncritical love. The reaction came when he realized the waste and extravagance
involved. He sometimes looked back with awe at the carnivals of affection he
had given, as a general might gaze upon a massacre he had ordered to satisfy an
impersonal blood lust.
    But to
be included in Dick Diver’s world for a while was a remarkable experience:
people believed he made special reservations about them, recognizing the proud
uniqueness of their destinies, buried under the compromises of how many years.
He won everyone quickly with an exquisite consideration and a politeness that
moved so fast and intuitively that it could be examined only in its effect.
Then, without caution, lest the first bloom of the relation wither, he opened
the gate to his amusing world. So long as they subscribed to it completely,
their happiness was his preoccupation, but at the first flicker of doubt as to
its all- inclusiveness he evaporated before their eyes, leaving little
communicable memory of what he had said or done.
    At
eight-thirty that evening he came out to meet his first guests, his coat
carried rather ceremoniously, rather promisingly, in his hand, like a
toreador’s cape. It was characteristic that after greeting Rosemary and her
mother he waited for them to speak first, as if to allow them the reassurance
of their own voices in new surroundings.
    To
resume Rosemary’s point of view it should be said that, under the spell of the
climb to Tarmes and the fresher air, she and her
mother looked about appreciatively. Just as the personal qualities of
extraordinary people can make themselves plain in an unaccustomed change of
expression, so the intensely calculated perfection of Villa Diana transpired
all at once through such minute failures as the chance apparition of a maid in
the background or the perversity of a cork. While the first guests arrived
bringing with them the excitement of the night, the domestic activity of the
day receded past them gently, symbolized by the Diver children and their
governess still at supper on the terrace.
    “What a
beautiful garden!” Mrs. Speers exclaimed.
    “Nicole’s
garden,” said Dick. “She won’t let it alone—she nags it all the time, worries
about its diseases. Any day now I expect to have her come down with Powdery
Mildew or Fly Speck, or Late Blight.” He pointed his forefinger decisively at
Rosemary, saying with a lightness seeming to conceal a paternal interest, “I’m
going to save your reason—I’m going to give you a hat to wear on the beach.”
    He
turned them from the garden to the terrace, where he poured a cocktail. Earl
Brady arrived, discovering Rosemary with surprise. His manner was softer than
at the studio, as if his differentness had been put on at the gate, and
Rosemary, comparing him instantly with Dick Diver, swung sharply toward the
latter. In comparison Earl Brady seemed faintly gross, faintly ill-bred; once
more, though, she felt an electric response to his person.
    He spoke
familiarly to the children who were getting up from their outdoor supper.
    “Hello,
Lanier, how about a song? Will you and Topsy sing me
a song?”
    “What
shall we sing?” agreed the little