Page:Storm Over Paris.pdf/16

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was drained out. He would fall back, pale with perspiration, his heart full of unbearable hatred, thinking how he could free himself from this unhealthy relationship. It was as if love and hate were fighting for mastery, the love a part of his headstrong youth, and the hate inherited from his ancestors, deep-rooted and dangerous.

"I'm flunking my exams. My mind is poisoned," he would rage, "while you are enjoying yourself at my expense. Can you figure it out? Can you? I wonder if you really ever loved me?"

Anna would turn pale with pain. His sudden outburst of ferocity would seal her lips. How could she ever tell him about these dreadful lonely nights when her love and her conscience were locked in mortal combat, leaving her spent and beaten. A wide desert of space yawning between them.

"There must be somebody between us," he would insist, "why don't you come out with it?"

"There is no one, except my conscience," she would argue.

"The heart can rise above it," he would retort, and so they would go on until the Tango would melt them once more together.

"Until Wednesday. And think it over, darling."

"Yes, I will."

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