Читать книгу The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald онлайн

502 страница из 1457

Usually, on nights like this, for there had been many lately, he could escape from this consuming introspection by thinking of children and the infinite possibilities of children—he leaned and listened and he heard a startled baby awake in a house across the street and lend a tiny whimper to the still night. Quick as a flash he turned away, wondering with a touch of panic whether something in the brooding despair of his mood had made a darkness in its tiny soul. He shivered. What if some day the balance was overturned, and he became a thing that frightened children and crept into rooms in the dark, approached dim communion with those phantoms who whispered shadowy secrets to the mad of that dark continent upon the moon….

Amory smiled a bit.

“You’re too much wrapped up in yourself,” he heard some one say. And again——

“Get out and do some real work——”

“Stop worrying——”

He fancied a possible future comment of his own.

“Yes—I was perhaps an egotist in youth, but I soon found it made me morbid to think too much about myself.”