Page:Storm Over Paris.pdf/294

"Orders, hell!" he exclaimed. "Do you realize the importance of this moment? And Comrade Combonne wants me to sleep, eh? To hell with sleep! I feel like singing out with all my strength - FREEDOM! FREEDOM! VICTORY! Arise, you slaves!" He lifted his arms as though addressing a crowd. "Today you are under the iron heel-tomorrow you shall be free!

"Why aren't you dancing, my girl?" he looked at her a though she had just walked in. "You ought to be dancing shouting, yelling your head off. We've lived to see the Day, Anna! We've lived to see the sun of victory." Suddenly he jumped up, threw his arms about her in a passionate embrace and became suspiciously quiet.

His silence frightened her. "You must rest," she repeated mechanically, and made an attempt to free herself from his grasp. Their eyes met, and the two gazed wonderingly a each other as if in a sudden flash of mutual recognition, there was a deeper understanding than they had ever felt before.

Pierre released her arms, "Anna," he whispered, half stammering. "Haven't you ever thought that it's time to come down from that distant heaven of yours? Haven't you noticed that I, Pierre Chartier, love you. I love you. I've loved you for years-since those days when I worked in the furrier shop and you sewed at the machine . . . but the hell with that bourgeois talk! The only thing that matters now is that you, I, all of us, are face to face with victory!"

His voice, deep and passionate, made her flesh tingle, as though with a faint electric vibration. She tried to say something, but the words were smothered by his kisses.

The urgent pressure of his arms broke through the gates that she had built around her emotions. The desire she had beaten down within herself for years, flamed to the surface