Page:Storm Over Paris.pdf/322
to his arm as they entered the cemetery, two lonely and dejected figures.
For a long time they wandered aimlessly among the tombstones. Dead leaves crackled beneath their feet. Eric kept up a patter of argument, trying to justify himself, Anna walked silently beside him. This burrowing into the past saddened her. She had wanted to forget, to blot out her past and start all over again. But did she really want a change? Was change possible? Did not change end up in permanence? She eyed her fingers grasping the top of a tombstone-and withdrew her hand as if it had been stung by a wasp. If only I could sit down and relax, think matters over, she thought. In order to gain time she drew his attention to the monument of Oscar Wilde. "What a shame," she said, "exposing a great poet to the ridicule of the crowds, by adding a pair of wings to his naked body."
They walked together silently until the twilight sky turned red, casting crimson shadows on the grey mountains, pointing their edges upward like bleeding knives. Anna stopped suddenly before a broken gravestone sinking into the earth and covered with weeds.
"Remember, Eric," she said with strange animation, "remember the great love I once told you about? Here it lies under the weeds."
Pacing back and forth, turning her head birdlike, as if she were looking for something, she suddenly bent down, plucked a few wild flowers and put them into her lapel. He eyed her enigmatically, as if seeking to probe the meaning of her sudden gesture.
"Want one too, Eric?" she mocked. "After all, what's the sense of a lover with a dead bride on a moonlit night? Bosh! Worn-out sentimentality! Isn't that true, Eric?" Leaning against the barbed-wire fence, she fixed her gaze into the