Читать книгу The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald онлайн

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“Well,” she began. “I felt like a minion of the almighty secret service as I slid by your inspiring and impeccable father, swathed in yards and yards of veiling.”

“He wouldn’t have noticed you without your veil,” answered Clayton, sitting down. “He was really most emotional under all that brusqueness. Really, you know, he’s quite a nice chap. Wish I knew him better.”

The train was in motion; the last uniforms had drifted in like brown, blown leaves, and now it seemed as if one tremendous wind was carrying them shoreward.

“How far are you going with me?” asked Clayton.

“Just to Rochester, an hour and a half. I absolutely had to see you before you left, which isn’t very Spartan of me. But really, you see, I feel that you don’t quite understand about last night, and look at me as” she paused “well—as rather exceptional.”

“Wouldn’t I be rather an awful cad if I thought about it in those terms at all?”

“No,” she said cheerily. “I, for instance, am both a romanticist and a psychologist. It does take the romance out of anything to analyze it, but I’m going to do it if only to clear myself in your eyes.”