Читать книгу The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald онлайн

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“Joe’s” had the additional advantage of seclusion from curious upper-class eyes, so at four each afternoon Amory, accompanied by friend or book, went up to experiment with his digestion. One day in March, finding that all the tables were occupied, he slipped into a chair opposite a freshman who bent intently over a book at the last table. They nodded briefly. For twenty minutes Amory sat consuming bacon buns and reading “Mrs. Warren’s Profession” (he had discovered Shaw quite by accident while browsing in the library during mid-years); the other freshman, also intent on his volume, meanwhile did away with a trio of chocolate malted milks.

By and by Amory’s eyes wandered curiously to his fellow-luncher’s book. He spelled out the name and title upside down—“Marpessa,” by Stephen Phillips. This meant nothing to him, his metrical education having been confined to such Sunday classics as “Come into the Garden, Maude,” and what morsels of Shakespeare and Milton had been recently forced upon him.