Читать книгу The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald онлайн

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The Voice: Even so.

Beauty: What of me? What chance shall I have?

The Voice: It will be “harder going,” if I may borrow a phrase.

Beauty: (After a dissatisfied pause) Why not the old lands, the land of grapes and soft-tongued men or the land of ships and seas?

The Voice: It’s expected that they’ll be very busy shortly.

Beauty: Oh!

The Voice: Your life on earth will be, as always, the interval between two significant glances in a mundane mirror.

Beauty: What will I be? Tell me?

The Voice: At first it was thought that you would go this time as an actress in the motion pictures but, after all, it’s not advisable. You will be disguised during your fifteen years as what is called a “susciety gurl.”

Beauty: What’s that?

(There is a new sound in the wind which must for our purposes be interpreted as The Voice scratching its head.)

The Voice: (At length) It’s a sort of bogus aristocrat.

Beauty: Bogus? What is bogus?

The Voice: That, too, you will discover in this land. You will find much that is bogus. Also, you will do much that is bogus.