Page:Storm Over Paris.pdf/60

everything to its furthermost limits in order that she might dress up what she saw with fantasies of her own invention, and retell it with her romantic exaggerations added, minutest detail.

At the Levitan home lived a niece of the family. This was Mary, a Warsaw girl who worked with Anna at the furrier's shop in the Place Gambetta. She was a lively girl, with a ready tongue, quick-loving and vivacious, and able to strike up friendships "right and left," as she herself put it. Everyone in the shop pampered her, good-naturedly accepting from her the kind of observations and remarks which they would have been quick to resent from others.

The truth was that Mary was often unaware herself of what she was saying or where her tongue was leading her. She was always feverishly searching for something to liven the atmosphere, to introduce a comic note. Let everyone laugh-that was her obsession; let everything be jolly and carefree. And at the same time she was able to bring those about her to tears; with her sweet, lyric voice she could sing sad songs for hours on end in half a dozen languages.

Mary had been orphaned as a child, and ever since had been shoved around from one aunt to another, until she had at last come to rest here in Paris with the Levitans.

On this Friday Mary had invited Anna to come home for supper. Knowing that no one else of the family would be at home, she had said;

"Now, no excuses, darling. You don't have any courses at school tonight, and as far as I can see no appointments. And even if you have one 'Je m'en fou. Well, what do you say?" She laughed her gay laugh. "And maybe we'll even go to the cinema," she added.

Anna followed her without much enthusiasm. The accidental circumstance that had kept her from meeting Eric