Читать книгу The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald онлайн

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“I guess I’ll run up to the garage,” said Harland. “I always go up about this time every night. You two just sit here and talk about old times.”

As father and son moved out of sight along the dim street John Jackson turned to Alice and slipped his arm about her shoulder and looked into her eyes.

“I love you, Alice.”

“I love you.”

Never since his marriage had he said that to any woman except his wife. But this was a new world tonight, with spring all about him in the air, and he felt as if he were holding his own lost youth in his arms.

“I’ve always loved you,” she murmured. “Just before I go to sleep every night, I’ve always been able to see your face. Why didn’t you come back?”

Tenderly he smoothed her hair. He had never known such happiness before. He felt that he had established dominance over time itself, so that it rolled away for him, yielding up one vanished springtime after another to the mastery of his overwhelming emotion.

“We’re still young, we two people,” he said exultantly. “We made a silly mistake a long, long time ago, but we found out in time.”