Читать книгу The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald онлайн

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Even when they danced at teatime, the click of bracelets on a hundred women’s arms only reminded him of the busy office sound on Monday morning. He seemed incapable of inaction.

“This is mighty sweet of you,” he said to her one afternoon, “and if it was after business hours I can’t tell you how I’d enjoy it. But my mind is on all the things I ought to be doing. I’m—I’m right sad.”

He saw then that he had hurt her, that by his frankness he had rejected all she was trying to do for him. But he was incapable of feeling differently.

“Lola, I’m mighty sorry,” he said softly, “and maybe someday it’ll be after hours again, and I can come to you——”

“I won’t be interested,” she said coldly. “And I see I was foolish ever to be interested at all.”

He was standing beside her car when this conversation took place, and before he could reply she had thrown it into gear and started away.

He stood there looking after her sadly, thinking that perhaps he would never see her anymore and that she would remember him always as ungrateful and unkind. But there was nothing he could have said. Something dynamic in him was incapable of any except a well-earned rest.