Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald (Illustrated) by F. Scott Fitzgerald Page B

against hope that she would prove not too exotic a bloom to fit the large spaces of spring as she had fitted the den in the Minnehaha Club. During May he wrote thirty-page documents almost nightly, and sent them to her in bulky envelopes exteriorly labelled “Part I” and “Part II.”
    “Oh, Alec, I believe I’m tired of college,” he said sadly, as they walked the dusk together.
    “I think I am, too, in a way.”
    “All I’d like would be a little home in the country, some warm country, and a wife, and just enough to do to keep from rotting.”
    “Me, too.”
    “I’d like to quit.”
    “What does your girl say?”
    “Oh!” Amory gasped in horror. “She wouldn’t think of marrying... that is, not now. I mean the future, you know.”
    “My girl would. I’m engaged.”
    “Are you really?”
    “Yes. Don’t say a word to anybody, please, but I am. I may not come back next year.”
    “But you’re only twenty! Give up college?”
    “Why, Amory, you were saying a minute ago — “
    “Yes,” Amory interrupted, “but I was just wishing. I wouldn’t think of leaving college. It’s just that I feel so sad these wonderful nights. I sort of feel they’re never coming again, and I’m not really getting all I could out of them. I wish my girl lived here. But marry — not a chance. Especially as father says the money isn’t forthcoming as it used to be.”
    “What a waste these nights are!” agreed Alec.
    But Amory sighed and made use of the nights. He had a snap-shot of Isabelle, enshrined in an old watch, and at eight almost every night he would turn off all the lights except the desk lamp and, sitting by the open windows with the picture before him, write her rapturous letters.
     ... Oh it’s so hard to write you what I really feel when I
      think about you so much; you’ve gotten to mean to me a dream that
      I can’t put on paper any more.  Your last letter came and it was
      wonderful!  I read it over about six times, especially the last
      part, but I do wish, sometimes, you’d be more frank and tell me
      what you really do think of me, yet your last letter was too good
      to be true, and I can hardly wait until June!  Be sure and be able
      to come to the prom.  It’ll be fine, I think, and I want to bring
      you just at the end of a wonderful year.  I often think over what
      you said on that night and wonder how much you meant.  If it were
      anyone but you — but you see I thought you were fickle the first
      time I saw you and you are so popular and everthing that I can’t
      imagine you really liking me best .
     
      Oh, Isabelle, dear — it’s a wonderful night.  Somebody is playing
      “Love Moon” on a mandolin far across the campus, and the music
      seems to bring you into the window.  Now he’s playing “Good-by,
      Boys, I’m Through,” and how well it suits me.  For I am through
      with everything.  I have decided never to take a cocktail again,
      and I know I’ll never again fall in love — I couldn’t — you’ve been
      too much a part of my days and nights to ever let me think of
      another girl.  I meet them all the time and they don’t interest me.
      I’m not pretending to be blasé, because it’s not that.  It’s just
      that I’m in love.  Oh, dearest Isabelle (somehow I can’t call you
      just Isabelle, and I’m afraid I’ll come out with the “dearest”
      before your family this June), you’ve got to come to the prom,
      and then I’ll come up to your house for a day and everything’ll be
      perfect....
    And so on in an eternal monotone that seemed to both of them infinitely charming, infinitely new.
     
    June came and the days grew so hot and lazy that they could not worry even about exams, but spent dreamy evenings on the court of Cottage, talking of long subjects until the sweep of country toward Stony Brook became a blue haze and the lilacs were white around tennis-courts, and words gave way to