Читать книгу The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald онлайн

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“I’m like they are—like Japanese lanterns and crape paper, and the music of that orchestra.”

“You’re a young idiot!” he insisted wildly. She shook her blond head.

“No, I’m not. I am like them…. You ought to see…. You don’t know me.” She hesitated and her eyes came back to him, rested abruptly on his, as though surprised at the last to see him there. “I’ve got a streak of what you’d call cheapness. I don’t know where I get it but it’s—oh, things like this and bright colors and gaudy vulgarity. I seem to belong here. These people could appreciate me and take me for granted, and these men would fall in love with me and admire me, whereas the clever men I meet would just analyze me and tell me I’m this because of this or that because of that.”

—Anthony for the moment wanted fiercely to paint her, to set her down now, as she was, as, as with each relentless second she could never be again.

“What were you thinking?” she asked.

“Just that I’m not a realist,” he said, and then: “No, only the romanticist preserves the things worth preserving.”