The Great Gatsby

“But we heard it,” insisted Daisy, surprising me by opening up again
in a flower-like way. “We heard it from three people, so it must be
true.”

Of course I knew what they were referring to, but I wasn’t even
vaguely engaged. The fact that gossip had published the banns was one
of the reasons I had come East. You can’t stop going with an old
friend on account of rumours, and on the other hand I had no intention
of being rumoured into marriage.

Their interest rather touched me and made them less remotely
rich—nevertheless, I was confused and a little disgusted as I drove
away. It seemed to me that the thing for Daisy to do was to rush out
of the house, child in arms—but apparently there were no such
intentions in her head. As for Tom, the fact that he “had some woman
in New York” was really less surprising than that he had been
depressed by a book. Something was making him nibble at the edge of
stale ideas as if his sturdy physical egotism no longer nourished his
peremptory heart.

Already it was deep summer on roadhouse roofs and in front of wayside
garages, where new red petrol-pumps sat out in pools of light, and
when I reached my estate at West Egg I ran the car under its shed and