Page:Storm Over Paris.pdf/136

follows it with her eyes, but the sun blinds her. Her eyes are burning from fatigue. . . she is sleepy, very sleepy, and now her mother wakes her.

"It is still so early, Mama, the house is so cold."

Mother laughs, and caresses her hair. She feels her hands gliding over it, fussing with her curls. Mother always like to curl her hair.

"How could I ever have thought that my mother is dead?" Anna wondered in her sleep. "How can a mother ever die? I hear her heart beating ever so plainly. Tick-tock, tick-tock, Please, Mama, let me off the bed. The sun is high, and I must hurry..."

"My daughter, the sun has long ago sunk down to rest," her mother's voice came from within her, enveloping her with a warm maternal love.

"But Mama, you've forgotten that he's coming today-and I have not yet drawn the curtains."

"Is he handsome?"

"I don't know, I haven't looked upon his face; I've only heard his voice, it comes from far distances, from a vague world where the beginning has lost the end."

"And you, daughter of mine, with your weak hands, hope to bind them together again?" Now mother's eyes gaze at her lifelessly-They've become glassy and dead; and Anna's heart stops in terror...

The scene changes. . . A wild, overgrown field. Rocks thrust up their jagged edges. Anna begins to gather up the stones, one by one. She needs them for father to strengthen the wall of the barn. Now her arms are full. They press on her heart, crushing her so that she cannot breathe. Rose petals fall from the trees, onto her face, suffocating her with their owerpowering aroma. It is wrong to sleep among the falling rose petals, she remembers father's warning... "O