Page:Storm Over Paris.pdf/24

was abolished; she was grappling with eternal riddles in a timeless present. Deep inside her was the feeling that something had to be settled, some question had to be answered, something so vital that her whole life might depend on it. To collect and master her thoughts, she sat down on a bench at the foot of an oak tree.

The longer she breathed in the early morning air the more languid she became, as though in the throes of a mild intoxication. Waves of happiness, dipping into gloom, kept rising and ebbing within her. At one moment she found herself justifying her affair with Eric, and at the next condemning it.

"But why shouldn't I belong to him?" she asked herself again. "Why do people insist on dragging around with them the baggage of ancient differences which have long since lost all their meaning? Has nothing changed? Does the End always return to the Beginning? The same old troubles as in Lapov. The same darkness and the same hatreds."

From the nearby Eupatoria Church came a peal of bells, filling the early morning air with sad vibrations, and sending Anna's thoughts back to scenes of the past, the summer twilight at home in Lapov, with the bells of the village church ringing out the same melancholy refrain.

She remembered her talks with her mother. "Mamma, why can't I go with Zosia and Hanya and strew blossoms around the church and sing the songs with all the other girls?" "Because, my daughter, you are a Jewish child, born to worship the one and only God."-"Mamma, why don't the village girls want to play with me? Why do they call me names and laugh at me?" The passing years had answered all her questions for her. Zosia and Hanya had gone dancing with the village boys, and on the way home they had thrown stones through the windows of the "Jewish" inn. That was