"That's right," corroborated Tom kindly. "We heard that you were engaged."
"It's libel. I'm too poor."
"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 rumors and on the other hand I had no intention of being rumored 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 gas-pumps sat out in pools of light, and when I reached my estate at West Egg I ran the car under its shed and sat for a while on an abandoned grass roller in the yard.
The wind had blown off, leaving a loud bright night with wings beating in the trees and a persistent organ sound as the full bellows of the earth blew the frogs full of life.