The present hysteria, the sentimentality he condemned, could not
continue to stand before the pressure of mercantile necessity. After
all, the entire country was not made up of fools.
Morice and his wife wandered off to the boardwalk, and he, August, must
have fallen asleep, for he suddenly sat up with a sensation of
strangeness and dizzy vision.
He rose and shook it off. It was still light, and he could see Bernard
at his automobile, parked before the latter's cottage.
The younger man caught sight of August at the same moment and called:
"We are going to a cafe with the Rathes; will you come?"
He was still slightly confused, his head full, and the ride, the gayety
of the crowd, he thought, would do him good.
"Be over for you," the other added; and later he was crowded into a
rear seat between Louise, his daughter, and Caroline Rathe.
Louise was wearing the necklace of platinum and diamonds Bernard Foster
had given her last Christmas. It was, August admitted to himself, a
splendid present, and must have cost eighteen or twenty thousand
dollars. The Government had made platinum almost prohibitive. In things
of this kind--the adornment of his wife, of, really, himself, the
extension of his pride--Bernard was extremely generous. It was in the
small affairs such as gasoline that he was prudent.
Both Caroline Rathe and Louise were handsome women handsomely dressed;
he was seated in a nest of soft tulle and ruffled embroidery, of pliant
swaying bodies.
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