Читать книгу The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald онлайн

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“You don’t have to—” he began.

“I know I don’t,” she interrupted, “but I’m going to, and when I’ve finished you’ll see where weakness and inevitability shade off. No, I don’t believe in Zola.”

“I don’t know him.”

“Well, my dear, Zola said that environment is environment, but he referred to families and races, and this is the story of a class.”

“What class?”

“Our class.”

“Please,” he said, “I’ve been wanting to hear.”

She settled herself against his shoulder and, gazing out at the vanishing country, began to talk very deliberately.

“It was said, before the war, that England was the only country in the world where women weren’t safe from men of their own class.”

“One particular fast set,” he broke in.

“A set, my dear man, who were fast but who kept every bit of their standing and position. You see even that was reaction. The idea of physical fitness came in with the end of the Victorians. Drinking died down in the universities. Why you yourself once told me that the really bad men never drank, rather kept themselves fit for moral or intellectual crimes.”