Free Babylon Revisited by F. Scott Fitzgerald, JAMES L. W. WEST III Page B

Rose. They laughed; they laugheduproariously; they found it was impossible to look at each other without laughing. But they were not laughing with this man—they were laughing at him. To them a man who talked after this fashion was either raving drunk or raving crazy.
    “You are Yale men, I presume,” said Peter, finishing his highball and preparing another.
    They laughed again.
    “Na-ah.”
    “So? I thought perhaps you might be members of that lowly section of the university known as the Sheffield Scientific School.”
    “Na-ah.”
    “Hm. Well, that’s too bad. No doubt you are Harvard men, anxious to preserve your incognito in this—this paradise of violet blue, as the newspapers say.”
    “Na-ah,” said Key scornfully, “we was just waitin’ for somebody.”
    “Ah,” exclaimed Peter, rising and filling their glasses, “very interestin’. Had a date with a scrublady, eh?”
    They both denied this indignantly.
    “It’s all right,” Peter reassured them, “don’t apologize. A scrublady’s as good as any lady in the world. Kipling says ‘Any lady and Judy O’Grady under the skin.’ ”
    “Sure,” said Key, winking broadly at Rose.
    “My case, for instance,” continued Peter, finishing his glass. “I got a girl up there that’s spoiled. Spoildest darn girl I ever saw. Refused to kiss me; no reason whatsoever. Led me on deliberately to think sure I want to kiss you and then plunk! Threw me over! What’s the younger generation comin’ to?”
    “Say tha’s hard luck,” said Key—“that’s awful hard luck.”
    “Oh, boy!” said Rose.
    “Have another?” said Peter.
    “We got in a sort of fight for a while,” said Key after a pause, “but it was too far away.”
    “A fight?—tha’s stuff!” said Peter, seating himself unsteadily. “Fight ’em all! I was in the army.”
    “This was with a Bolshevik fella.”
    “Tha’s stuff!” exclaimed Peter, enthusiastic. “That’s what I say! Kill the Bolshevik! Exterminate ’em!”
    “We’re Americans,” said Rose, implying a sturdy, defiant patriotism.
    “Sure,” said Peter. “Greatest race in the world! We’re all Americans! Have another.”
    They had another.
    At one o’clock a special orchestra, special even in a day of special orchestras, arrived at Delmonico’s, and its members, seating themselves arrogantly around the piano, took up the burden of providing music for the Gamma Psi Fraternity. They were headed by a famous flute-player, distinguished throughout New York for his feat of standing on his head and shimmying with his shoulders while he played the latest jazz on his flute. During his performance the lights were extinguished except for the spotlight on the flute-player and another roving beam that threw flickering shadows and changing kaleidoscopic colors over the massed dancers.
    Edith had danced herself into that tired, dreamy state habitual only with débutantes, a state equivalent to the glow of a noble soul after several long highballs. Her mind floated vaguely on the bosom of the music; her partners changed with the unreality of phantoms under the colorful shifting dusk, and to her present coma it seemed as if days had passed since the dance began. She had talked on many fragmentary subjects with many men. She had been kissed once and made love to six times. Earlier in the evening different undergraduates had danced with her, but now, like all the more popular girls there, she had her own entourage—that is, half a dozen gallants had singled her out or were alternating her charms with those of some other chosen beauty; they cut in on her in regular, inevitable succession.
    Several times she had seen Gordon—he had been sitting a long time on the stairway with his palm to his head, his dull eyes fixed at an infinite speck on the floor before him, very depressed, he looked, and quite drunk—but Edith each time had averted her glance hurriedly. All that seemed long ago; her mind was passive now, her senses were