Читать книгу The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald онлайн

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They were coming out of the restaurant, and Hallie’s voice, with a new note in it, broke in on his meditations.

“Get a taxi; I want to go home.”

He turned to her in consternation.

“What? You want to go back without seeing the famous indoor panorama, with paintings of all the actions and the life-size figures of the casualties in the foreground—”

“There’s a taxi,” she interrupted. “Quick!”

“A taxi!” he groaned, running after it through the mud. “And these taxis are robbers—we might have had a limousine out and back for the same price.”

In silence they returned to the hotel. As Hallie entered the elevator she looked at him with suddenly determined eyes.

“Please wear your dinner coat tonight. I want to go out somewhere and dance—and please send flowers.”

Corcoran wondered if this form of diversion had been included in Mr. Bushmill’s intentions—especially since he had gathered that Hallie was practically engaged to the Mr. Nosby who was to meet them in Amsterdam.

Distraught with doubt he went to a florist and priced orchids. But a corsage of three would come to twenty-four dollars, and this was not an item he cared to enter in the little book. Regretfully, he compromised on sweet peas and was relieved to find her wearing them when she stepped out of the elevator at seven in a pink-petaled dress.