Tender Is the Night: Book 2, Chapter 20 Summary & Analysis

Wearing pajamas inside her hotel room, Rosemary is more beautiful than ever. She calls Dick “youngster” and tells him that she was “scared” by his unkempt appearance that morning, but glad that he looks “fine again” now. They share a smile, “as if they two together had managed to get rid of all the trouble in the world and were now at peace in their own heaven.” They are interrupted twice by phone calls for Rosemary and, sensing Dick’s restlessness, she lowers “the lights for love,” and the two kiss “passionately” until they are breathless.

Rosemary breaks away from Dick, leaving him lying on her hotel bed alone. “Are you actually a virgin?” he asks her. Evading the question, she teases him for asking. Dick is perplexed by her response, and wonders whether she is just trying to intensify his desire for her. For three years, Rosemary has held Dick up on a pedestal, casting him in the role of “ideal” man. Now, however, she realizes with disappointment Dick has the same “exigent demands” as all the other men, “as if he wanted to take some of herself away, carry it off in his pocket.”

The next morning Dick wakes early to accompany Rosemary to the film set. As Dick is given a tour around the set, he notices Rosemary talking to an Italian actor named Nicotera on set. Later, Dick and Rosemary have lunch together in a “splendid” restaurant and afterwards, feeling “flushed and happy” they return to the hotel together. Once there, Rosemary desires “to be taken […] and what had begun as a childish infatuation on a beach was accomplished at last.”