Page:Storm Over Paris.pdf/112

of the crowd. The words of the song followed her. "If you loved me, you'd come!" The song haunted her, working its poignant magic upon her heart. . . If only she might see him once more, hear his voice!

She glanced at a clock on a tower. Ten o'clock. A newsboy called out the last edition of the Paris Soir, and thrust a copy of the paper toward her . . . Paris Soir? Don't you know that Eric reads it every evening? He must be reading it now. She glanced at the paper and thought: Maybe we're both reading the same page at this very moment. Maybe!

"If You Loved Me, You'd Come!" She strolled on towards St. Michel. At the Notre Dame Cathedral she halted for moment. The tree, the bench near the church where they would sit so often together. It was here that they had planned their future! Here they had quarreled and made up. And now they had drifted apart, separated by some fatal wind, lost in the tangle of pavements and confused emotions. And yet, she could sense his nearness, his tangible presence.

The appraising eyes, the leers of the male prowlers on the hunt for fair game, upset her, and at the same time they reminded her of her acute loneliness: she was alone, terribly alone in the midst of a moving forest of people. She was halfway across the bridge; a lonely barge was gliding across the channel, like a black whale with a probing head- light in its forehead. At the corner café she took refuge, but the pursuing eyes and whispering questions caught up with her.

At a nearby table a middle-aged man and smiling at her. He was well-groomed, his light grey kept on nodding suit and blue-silk shirt gave him an air of distinction.

"Do I embarrass you, Mademoiselle?" he asked with an obvious foreign accent. His polite, suave manner made her