Читать книгу The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald онлайн

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He regarded her critically.

“I’d say on the whole that you’ve kept your looks.”

“Well, I like that.” She raised her brows at him in reproof. “You talk as if I were some shelved, old play-about, just over some domestic catastrophe.”

There was a pause; then he asked her directly.

“How about Dick?”

She grew serious at once.

“Poor Dick—I suppose we were engaged.”

“Suppose!” he said, astonished. “Why it was understood by everyone. Both our families knew. I know I used to lie awake and envy my lucky brother.”

She laughed.

“Well, we certainly thought ourselves engaged. If war hadn’t come we’d be comfortably married now, but if he were still alive under these circumstances, I doubt if we’d be even engaged.”

“You weren’t in love with him?”

“Well, you see, perhaps that wouldn’t be the question, perhaps he wouldn’t marry me and perhaps I couldn’t marry him.”

He jumped to his feet, astounded, and her warning hush just prevented him from exclaiming aloud. Before he could control his voice enough to speak she had whisked off with a staff officer. What could she mean?—except that in some moment of emotional excitement she had—but he couldn’t bear to think of Eleanor in that light. He must have misunderstood—he must talk more with her. No, surely—if it had been true she wouldn’t have said it so casually. He watched her—how close she danced. Her bright brown hair lay against the staff officer’s shoulder, and her vivacious face was only two or three inches from his when she talked. All things considered Clay was becoming more angry every minute with things in general.