The Washington herald., 1922-08-19
The Beautiful
And Damned

By F. Scott Fitzgerald.

ton by telling him that ne was tne
first clever man she had ever known
and she got tire1 Of shallow people"
He wondered that people fell in love
with such women. Yet he supposed
that under a certain impassioned
glance even she might take on a soft
ness and promise.
But Gloria. violently showing on
her love for Anthony, was diverted
into a state of purring content.
Finally Richard. Caramel arrived
for a garrulous and to Gloria painfully
literary weekend, during which he
discussed himself with Anthony lons
after she lay in childlike sleep up
stairs.
TITS been mighty funny. this sue
cess and ALL" said Dick. Just before
the novel appeared I'd been trying.
without success. to sell some stories.
Then. after my book came out. !
polished up three and had them ac-
cepted by one Of the magazines that
had rejected them before. I've done
a lot of them since; publishers don't
pay me for my book till this winter.
Don't let the victor belong to the
spoils."
You mean write trash?" He con-
sidered. IF you mean deliberately
injecting a slushy fade-out into each
one. I'm not. But 1 don't suppose
I'm being so careful I'm certainly
writing faster and 1 don't seem to
be thinking as much as 1 used to.
Perhaps it's because 1 don't get any
conversation. now that you're married
and Maury's gone to Philadelphia.
Haven't the old urge and ambition
Early success and all that"
Doesn't it worry you?"
"Frantically. / got a thing I call
sentence-fever that must be like buck
fever-it's a sort of intense literary
self-consciousness that comes when
try to force myself. But the really
awful days aren't when 1 think
can't write. They're when / wonder
whether any writing is worth while
at ALL mean whether I'm not a
sort of glorihed buffoon."
hnC " near gOu NhAh NAidN way
said Anthony with a touch of his old
patronizing insolence. II was afraid
you'd gotten a bit idiotic over your
work. Read the damnedest interview
YOU gave out"
Dick interrupted with an agonized
expression
Good Lord Don't mention IT.
Young lady wrote it-most admiring
young lady. Kept telling me my work
was strong and 1 sort of lost my
head and made a lot of strange pro-
nouncements. Some of il was good,
though. don't you think
'Oh. yes: that part about the wise
writer writing for the youth of his
generation, the critic of the next and
the schoolmaster of ever afterward.' -
"Oh, 1 believe a lot Of it," ad-
mitted Richard Caramel with a faint
beam 1T simply was a mistake to
give 1t out
In November they moved into An
thongs apartment. from which they
sailed triumphantly to the Yale-Har-
ward and Harvard Princeton football
games. to the St. Nicholas ice-skating
rink. to a thorough round of the thea
tiers and to a miscellany of enter
tainments-from small. staid dances
to the great affairs that Gloria loved.
held in those few houses where Iackeys
with powdered wigs scurried around
in magnificent Anglomania under the
direction of gigantic majordomos.
Their intention was to go abroad the
hrst OF the year or. at any rate, when
the war was over. Anthony had
actually completed a Chestertonian n
essay on the twelfth century by way
of introduction to his proposed book
and Gloria had done some extensive
research work on the question of Rus
sian-sable coats-in fact the winter
was approaching quite comfortably,
when the Bilphistic demiurge decided
suddenly in mid-December that Mrs.
Gilbert's soul had aged sufficiently in
IT'S present incarnation. In conse-
quence Anthony took a miserable and
hysterical Gloria out to Kansas CITY.
where. in the fashion of mankind, they
paid the terrible and mind-shaking
difference to the dead.
Mr. Gilbert became. for the first and
last time in his life, truly pathetic
figure. That woman he had broken
TO wait upon his body and play con-
gregation to his mind had Ironically
deserted him-just when he could NOT
much longer have supported her.
Never again would he be able so satis-
factorily to bore and bully a human
soul.
CHAPTER II.
Symposium.
Gloria had lulled Anthony's mind
10 sleep She who seemed of all
women the wisest and the finest
hung like a brilliant curtain across
ms doorways. shutting out the light
Of the sun. In those first years what
ne believed bore invariably the
stamp of Gloria: he saw the sun
always through the pattern of the
curtain.
IL was a sort of lassitude that
brought them back to Marietta for
another summer. Through a golden
enervating spring they had loitered
restive, and lazily extravaeant.
along the California coast, Joining
other parties intermittently and
drifting from Pasadena to Coronado
to Santa Barbara, with no purpose
more apparent than Gloria's desire
TO dance by different music or catch
some innnitesimal variant among
the changing colors of the sea. Out
o. the Pacific there rose to greet
them savage rocklands and equally
barbaric hostelries built that at tea
time one might browse into a
languid wicker bazaar glorified by
the polo costumes of Southhampton
ana Lake Forest and Newport and
Palm Beach And as tba wavoa -.