Page:Storm Over Paris.pdf/26

her uncle in his journeyings to the villages and farms, she would find in the pack a few flowers from some stranger's garden.

Lost in recollection, Anna sat idly poking at the soft earth with a dry twig. The familiar odor of newly-turned earth filled her with a poignant sadness which seemed ready at any moment to become a frantic insecurity. Suddenly she looker about; no one was in sight. Quickly, with the toe of he shoe, she turned up a clod of earth and, as though it were some kind of holy emblem, lifted it to her lips. Her own action astonished her, and she had the strange feeling that she had been seen. She let the lump of earth fall. No, there was no one about, but still she could not escape the strange feeling that someone was watching. Eyes were staring at her, many eyes. The eyes of men with rolled-up sleeves and muscular arms; of women with frightened faces; of a child at its mother's bared breast. She could see a sickle, a cannon, a wreath of laurels.

Anna remained rapt and motionless. Not a living soul around, yet a vast army seemed to have risen about her. The outstretched hand of a fallen warrior, the fixed stares of his steed. Anna looked around, and finally realized that these images were not inventions of her mind, but actually sculptures on a grey bare wall of uneven and rough stones. Though the stones were crumbling, ready to fall into decay, yet they maintained a full harmony.

"Eric, Eric," she murmured. "How close I came to making a frightful mistake-denying the new world, its ideas and dreams, rejecting life's harmony. No, this is not Lapov. This is Paris, where passersby greet you with a smile, where the woman who sells you milk is so concerned if you look pale, where the flower vendors tell you so earnestly which of the blossoms will bring fortune and love. This is where the man