‘Not seeing,’ said Gatsby. ‘No, we couldn’t meet. But both of us loved each other all that time, old sport, and you didn’t know. I used to laugh sometimes—‘but there was no laughter in his eyes, ‘to think that you didn’t know.’
‘Oh—that’s all.’ Tom tapped his thick fingers together like a clergyman and leaned back in his chair.
‘You’re crazy!’ he exploded. ‘I can’t speak about what happened five years ago, because I didn’t know Daisy then—
and I’ll be damned if I see how you got within a mile of her unless you brought the groceries to the back door. But all the rest of that’s a God Damned lie. Daisy loved me when she married me and she loves me now.’
‘No,’ said Gatsby, shaking his head.
‘She does, though. The trouble is that sometimes she gets foolish ideas in her head and doesn’t know what she’s doing.’ He nodded sagely. ‘And what’s more, I love Daisy too.
Once in a while I go off on a spree and make a fool of myself, but I always come back, and in my heart I love her all the time.’
‘You’re revolting,’ said Daisy. She turned to me, and her voice, dropping an octave lower, filled the room with thrill-10
The Great Gatsby
ing scorn: ‘Do you know why we left Chicago? I’m surprised that they didn’t treat you to the story of that little spree.’
Gatsby walked over and stood beside her.
‘Daisy, that’s all over now,’ he said earnestly. ‘It doesn’t matter any more. Just tell him the truth—that you never loved him—and it’s all wiped out forever.’
She looked at him blindly. ‘Why,—how could I love him—possibly?’
‘You never loved him.’
She hesitated. Her eyes fell on Jordan and me with a sort of appeal, as though she realized at last what she was doing—and as though she had never, all along, intended doing anything at all. But it was done now. It was too late.
‘I never loved him,’ she said, with perceptible reluctance.
‘Not at Kapiolani?’ demanded Tom suddenly.
‘No.’
From the ballroom beneath, muffled and suffocating chords were drifting up on hot waves of air.
‘Not that day I carried you down from the Punch Bowl to keep your shoes dry?’ There was a husky tenderness in his tone. ‘… Daisy?’
‘Please don’t.’ Her voice was cold, but the rancour was gone from it. She looked at Gatsby. ‘There, Jay,’ she said—
but her hand as she tried to light a cigarette was trembling.
Suddenly she threw the cigarette and the burning match on the carpet.
‘Oh, you want too much!’ she cried to Gatsby. ‘I love you now—isn’t that enough? I can’t help what’s past.’ She began Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com
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to sob helplessly. ‘I did love him once—but I loved you too.’
Gatsby’s eyes opened and closed.
‘You loved me TOO?’ he repeated.
‘Even that’s a lie,’ said Tom savagely. ‘She didn’t know you were alive. Why,—there’re things between Daisy and me that you’ll never know, things that neither of us can ever forget.’
The words seemed to bite physically into Gatsby.
‘I want to speak to Daisy alone,’ he insisted. ‘She’s all excited now——‘
‘Even alone I can’t say I never loved Tom,’ she admitted in a pitiful voice. ‘It wouldn’t be true.’
‘Of course it wouldn’t,’ agreed Tom.
She turned to her husband.
‘As if it mattered to you,’ she said.
‘Of course it matters. I’m going to take better care of you from now on.’
‘You don’t understand,’ said Gatsby, with a touch of panic. ‘You’re not going to take care of her any more.’
‘I’m not?’ Tom opened his eyes wide and laughed. He could afford to control himself now. ‘Why’s that?’
‘Daisy’s leaving you.’
‘Nonsense.’
