The Importance of Being a Man

Tom Buchanan and I were in the same senior society. We talked for a few minutes on the sunny porch. He turned me around by one arm, moved a broad flat hand along the front vista. The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. They were both in white, and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house. A breeze blew through the room, blue curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags,. twisting them up toward the frosted wedding cake of the ceiling.