Читать книгу The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald онлайн

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“I read history with a new viewpoint since I had known Cleopatra and Messalina and Montespan,”—he started toward the door.

“Where are you going?” I asked in alarm.

“We’re going upstairs to meet the lady. She’s a widow now for awhile, so you must say Mrs.—see—Mrs.”

We went upstairs, I carefully behind with hands ready to be outstretched should he fall. I felt particularly unhappy. The hardest man in the world to handle is one who is too sober to be vacillating and too drunk to be persuaded; and I had, strange to say, an idea that my uncle was eminently a person to be followed.

We entered a large room. I couldn’t describe it if my life depended on it. Uncle George nodded and beckoned to a woman at a bridge four across the room. She nodded and, rising from the table, walked slowly over. I started—naturally—

Here is my impression—a woman of thirty or a little under, dark, with intense physical magnetism and a most expressive mouth capable as I soon found out of the most remarkable change of expression by the slightest variance in facial geography. It was a mouth to be written to, but, though it could never have been called large, it could never have been crowded into a sonnet—I confess I have tried. Sonnet indeed! It contained the emotions of a drama and the history, I presume, of an epic. It was, as near as I can fathom, the eternal mouth. There were eyes also, brown, and a high warm coloring; but oh the mouth….