Читать книгу The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald онлайн

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“Good-bye,” he said simply.

He seemed to realize that any pretense of sorrow on his part would be transparent. She knew that he did not want her.

The door slammed, the car started, skidding in the snowy street.

Yanci leaned back dismally in the corner. Try as she might, she could not see where she had failed or what it was that had changed his attitude toward her. For the first time in her life she had ostensibly offered herself to a man—and he had not wanted her. The precariousness of her position paled beside the tragedy of her defeat.

She let the car go on—the cold air was what she needed, of course. Ten minutes had slipped away drearily before she realized that she had not a penny with which to pay the driver.

“It doesn’t matter,” she thought. “They’ll just send me to jail, and that’s a place to sleep.”

She began thinking of the taxi driver.

“He’ll be mad when he finds out, poor man. Maybe he’s very poor, and he’ll have to pay the fare himself.” With a vague sentimentality she began to cry.