At the beginning of chapter 4, Jake and Brett are in a taxi together talking about how miserable Brett is. As they ride through the streets of Paris, Jake feels bad for Brett and wishes that he could do something for her that will make her feel better. So after a minute or to passes, Jake kisses Brett, hoping that it will make her feel better, but instead she pulls away from him. Brett tells Jake that she loves him, but she cannot have a romantic relationship with him because Jake cannot have sex. Jake upset with her, tells her that it is fine, but Brett feels that it is fate that she is now feeling the pain that she had given to many guys before. As they head to a cafe to drink, Brett asks Jake to kiss her once more before they arrive. He does so and thus both of them feel a major attraction of the kiss pulling them together. At the cafe, Jake and Brett again run into their friends. A man called Zizi introduces them to Count Mippipopolous, a Greek man who takes an immediate interest in Brett. After their drink Jake and Brett feel the need to call it a night. Brett tells Jake to make an appointment to meet with her the next day, and Jake leaves to return home for the night. When he arrives home, Jake takes his mail form the concierge, and goes to his bedroom. When he gets into bed, he begins to think about his wound and what it might be like not to have it. Then he remembers how he received it, flying a mission in Italy. He then remembers a certain colonel who visited him in the hospital and said that he had given a lot more than his life. Then Jake gets upset and supposes that he would have never had any trouble if he had never met Brett. He then begins to cry, all alone he lays down in his bed and cries himself to sleep. After about four in the morning, Brett wakes him up by knocking on his front door totally drunk. Jake lets her up to his room, and Brett reports that the count offered her ten thousand dollars to go to Biarritz, on the southern coast of France, with him, but she turned him down. She tells Jake that she wants him to go out with them, but he declines. He tries to persuade her to stay, kissing her, but she refuses. Chapter 5 then opens the next morning with Robert meeting Jake at his office to go and have lunch with him. Robert then asks Jake about Brett, and Jake tells him that she is a drunk and that she is going to marry another man named Mike Campbell. Jake tells Robert that Mike is a Scotsman who will be rich someday and he also says that Brett's true love died of dysentery during the war. Jake explains that he met Brett while she worked as a Volunteer Aid Detachment in the hospital where he was taken for his injury. Robert then got very annoyed that Jake did not describe Brett in not one good way. Jake tells Robert to go to hell. Robert then got very angry at the insult and threatens to leave lunch. Jake apologizes and persuades Robert to stay. Afterward, Jake could tell that Robert wishes to talk about Brett but avoids bringing up the subject again.
Chapter 4 & 5 Personal Comments
I enjoined reading these two chapters very much because I think that they show Jake being very emotional and caring. In Chapter 4 I love the part when Jake and Brett kiss, but realize that they cannot be romantically tied together because of Jake's disabilities. I like that part of the chapter because I think that Brett pushing Jake away from her is good because he was less heartbroken when he found out about Mike. I also thought that it was very upsetting for Jake to cry himself to sleep. In Chapter 5 I thought that it was very rude of Robert to come into Jake's office and get into a fight with him about the way Brett treated Jake. In these two chapters I felt that I was in the book and I was witnessing everything happen. I could not book the book down during these two chapters and I loved every word of them.
