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“I didn’t,” said Joe, “until tonight. And I wouldn’t have then, only I sent up this cotton waste and oil from the engine room this afternoon for a girl upstairs who had her hand burned with a smoothing-iron. I’ve been firing the engine in that laundry for the last two weeks.”

“And then you didn’t – “

“My purchaser from Peoria,” said Joe, “and Gen. Pinkney are both creations of the same art – but you wouldn’t call it either painting or music.”

And then they both laughed, and Joe began:

“When one loves one’s Art no service seems – ”

But Delia stopped him with her hand on his lips. “No,” she said – “just ‘When one loves.’”

The last of the belles

F. Scott Fitzgerald

I

After Atlanta’s Southern charm, we all underestimated Tarleton. It was a little hotter there than anywhere we’d been – a dozen rookies collapsed the first day in that Georgia sun. I stayed out at camp and let Lieutenant Warren tell me about the girls. This was fifteen years ago, and I’ve forgotten how I felt, except that the days went along, one after another, better than they do now, and I was empty-hearted, because up North she who I had loved for three years was getting married. I saw the clippings and newspaper photographs. It was “a romantic wartime wedding,” all very rich and sad.

A day came when I went into Tarleton for a haircut and ran into a nice fellow named Bill Knowles, who was in my time at Harvard. He’d been in the National Guard division that preceded us in camp; at the last moment he had transferred to aviation and been left behind.

“I’m glad I met you, Andy,” he said with undue seriousness. “I’ll hand you on all my information before I start for Texas. You see, there’re really only three girls here – ”

I was interested; there was something mystical about there being three girls.

“ – and here’s one of them now.”

We were in front of a drug store and he marched me in and introduced me to a lady I promptly detested.

“The other two are Ailie Calhoun and Sally Carrol Happer.”

I guessed from the way he pronounced her name, that he was interested in Ailie Calhoun – what a lovely name. It was on his mind what she would be doing while he was gone; he wanted her to have a quiet, uninteresting time.

At my age I don’t even hesitate to confess that images of Ailie Calhoun that rushed into my mind were not chivalrous at all. At twenty-three there is no such thing as a preempted beauty; though, had Bill asked me, I would doubtless have sworn in all sincerity to care for her like a sister. He didn’t; he just worried about having to go. Three days later he telephoned me that he was leaving next morning and he’d take me to her house that night.

We met at the hotel and walked uptown through the flowery, hot twilight. The four white pillars of the Calhoun house faced the street, and behind them the veranda was dark as a cave with hanging, weaving, climbing vines.

When we came up the walk a girl in a white dress went out of the front door, crying, “I’m so sorry I’m late!” and seeing us, added: “Why, I thought I heard you come ten minutes – ”