Читать книгу The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald онлайн

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You will have to do your best with that. The story should have started long ago.

It was an afternoon in September when she broke a theatre date in order to have tea with young Mrs. Arthur Elkins, once her roommate at school.

“I wish,” began Myra as they sat down exquisitely, “that I’d been a senorita or a mademoiselle or something. Good grief! What is there to do over here once you’re out, except marry and retire!”

Lilah Elkins had seen this form of ennui before.

“Nothing,” she replied coolly; “do it.”

“I can’t seem to get interested, Lilah,” said Myra, bending forward earnestly. “I’ve played round so much that even while I’m kissing the man I just wonder how soon I’ll get tired of him. I never get carried away like I used to.”

“How old are you, Myra?”

“Twenty-one last spring.”

“Well,” said Lilah complacently, “take it from me, don’t get married unless you’re absolutely through playing round. It means giving up an awful lot, you know.”

“Through! I’m sick and tired of my whole pointless existence. Funny, Lilah, but I do feel ancient. Up at New Haven last spring men danced with me that seemed like little boys and once I overheard a girl say in the dressing room, ‘There’s Myra Harper! She’s been coming up here for eight years.’ Of course she was about three years off, but it did give me the calendar blues.”