“The dance?” He dismissed all the dances he had given with a snap of his fingers. “Old sport, the dance is unimportant.”

He wanted nothing less of Daisy than that she should go to Tom and say: “I never loved you.” After she had obliterated three years with that sentence they could decide upon the more practical measures to be taken. One of them was that, after she was free, they were to go back to Louisville and be married from her house — just as if it were five years ago.

“And she doesn't understand,” he said. “She used to be able to understand. We'd sit for hours — — ”

He broke off and began to walk up and down a desolate path of fruit rinds and discarded favors and crushed flowers.