What is the theme of the Fitzgerald excerpt? The Baltimore Station was hot and crowded, so Lois was forced to stand by the telegraph desk for interminable, sticky seconds while a clerk with big front teeth counted and recounted a large lady’s day message, to determine whether it contained the innocuous forty-nine words or the fatal fifty-one.

Lois, waiting, decided she wasn’t quite sure of the address, so she took the letter out of her bag and ran over it again.

“Darling”: it began—“I understand and I’m happier than life ever meant me to be. If I could give you the things you’ve always been in tune with—but I can’t, Lois; we can’t marry and we can’t lose each other and let all this glorious love end in nothing.

“Until your letter came, dear, I’d been sitting here in the half dark thinking and thinking where I could go and ever forget you; abroad, perhaps, to drift through Italy or Spain and dream away the pain of having lost you where the crumbling ruins of older, mellower civilizations would mirror only the desolation of my heart—and then your letter came.

“Sweetest, bravest girl, if you’ll wire me I’ll meet you in Wilmington—till then I’ll be here just waiting and hoping for every long dream of you to come true.