She sat thinking, thinking. She applied herself first to
stimulate the revolt that rose within her against Golightly
Ticke's advice--his intolerably, no, his forgetfully
presumptuous advice. She would be just to him: he talked
so often to women with whom such words would carry weight,
for an instant he might fail to recognize that she was
not one of those. It was absurd to be angry, and not at
all in accordance with any theory of life that operated
in Paris. Instinctively, at the thought of a moral
indignation upon such slender grounds in Paris she gave
herself the benefit of a thoroughly expressive Parisian
shrug. And how they understood, success in Paris! Beasts!
And yet it was all in the game. It was a matter of skill,
of superiority, of puppet-playing. One need not soil
one's hands--in private one could always laugh. She
remembered how Nadie had laughed when three bunches of
roses from three different art critics had come in
together--how inextinguishably Nadie had laughed. It was
in itself a, success of a kind. Nadie had no scruples,
except about her work. She went straight to her end,
believing it to be an end worth arriving at by any means.
And now Nadie would presently be _tres en vue--tres en
vue!_ After all, it was a much finer thing to be scrupulous
about one's work--that was the real morality, the real
life.
Pages:
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105