Page:Storm Over Paris.pdf/141

somehow confused. What do you think, Anna? Maybe I ought to give up my medical studies entirely. Maybe I ought to turn to law or economics. Or better still, give up my studies altogether. The whole business of digging in books is beginning to gag me. Goethe was right-in the beginning was the Deed. What the world needs is-action! Politics-that's the thing today. I'm thinking seriously of a political career."

She gazed at him with a vast scorn, and then she felt sick to the stomach as if the lingering ecstasy in her being had suddenly turned to gall and wormwood. It was as if she had fallen from a great height, like one of the rebellious angels, and was frozen stiff at the bottom-most pit of hell.

Her Tunisian dream was over! He caught the despair in her face and tried to drown her disappointment in a torrent of words! "Why, darling," he exclaimed, "you who want to with those filthy primitives, much less touch them! We are become a nurse, would flinch from having anything to da living in the current of the world, abreast of civilization We're progressing, while there in Tunisia, life would mean nothing but spiritual suicide."

He lit a cigarette and puffed away nervously. He paced the room, stopped suddenly and clicked his heels. Anna eyed him curiously; he seemed to be miles away, out of the room, out of her physical and spiritual vision. The unconscious clicking heels were like the echo of an approaching storm.

But her optimism rallied. "As long as he still loves me, I'll take my chances. I'll pull out the weeds of politics with devotion." She lifted her head lovingly and cooed, "Let's get out of here, darling."

As she was dressing he folded her in his arms and kissed her ardently. "You think I prefer politics to our dream home