Читать книгу The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald онлайн

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The music had ceased for some time when presently the murmurous silence was broken by the sound of a rowboat disturbing the quiet waves. She sprang suddenly to her feet and her eyes strained out over the bay.

“Listen!” she said quickly. “I want you to tell me your name.”

“No.”

“Please,” she begged him. “I’m going away tomorrow.”

He didn’t answer.

“I don’t want you to forget me,” she said. “My name is——”

“I won’t forget you. I will promise to remember you always. Whoever I may love I will always compare her to you, my first love. So long as I live you will always have that much freshness in my heart.”

“I want you to remember,” she murmured brokenly. “Oh, this has meant more to me than it has to you—much more.”

She was standing so close to him that he felt her warm young breath on his face. Once again they swayed together. He pressed her hands and wrists between his as it seemed right to do, and kissed her lips. It was the right kiss, he thought, the romantic kiss—not too little or too much. Yet there was a sort of promise in it of other kisses he might have had, and it was with a slight sinking of his heart that he heard the rowboat close to the yacht and realized that her family had returned. The evening was over.