Page:Storm Over Paris.pdf/18

a cheap thing, and she has to struggle to knot it. "The devil!" he thinks angrily. Now he feels hot and uncomfortable. He wants to push her away, and then he breaks into a fit of coughing.

He woke, and glanced at the clock. Now it was time to get up, but the clammy perspiration that bathed his body made him unwilling to leave the bed. He closed his for another moment and found himself lost in another dream.

This time he is in Warsaw, in Krashinsky's Gardens, Anna by his side. She takes off her raincoat and puts it around his shoulders. The coat is wet and cold. A shiver crawls over his flesh. He feels a pang of pain in his side. If only he were home his mother would massage him with alcohol; but somehow or other he has forgotten the way to his mother's house. He sees a dark mountain rearing up before him; no, it is only the printing shop where he works. He feels the freezing dampness that always comes from it. He wants to run away, but slips and falls. "Am I a man or a scared old woman?" he asks himself-and with the question he tears himself awake.

The dream broke. Getting out of bed, Soma stuck his feet into his slippers and crossed over to the wash stand to shave. As he passed the razor over his lathered cheeks, he thought of how he would spend the day. Yes, he would go up to see her-without ceremony.

"How long is all this nonsense going to go on?" he would say to her. "Just think it over, Anna. After all, we're not children, we're grown up people." How absurd it was-she perched up there on the sixth floor and he here on the second. What could be more sensible than for them to share a room, perhaps on the third? "Everything considered, I wouldn't be such a bad match," he thought, peering at his