Page:Storm Over Paris.pdf/69

Chapter 8

After the disastrous night in Soma's room, Anna left the Hotel National for the Hotel de France, on the nearby rue Bagnolet. It was a square shaped room tidy and light, the walls painted white, with clusters of green grapes. There were rag rugs scattered over the well polished floor. The bed was covered with a pink spread, and a green cloth decked the table. There were white curtains at the window; when the wind blew they fluttered pleasantly, showing the wide spread branches of a blossoming acacia.

It is good to have a pink covered bed-but not when one is twenty. At first the bed enfolds you, makes you feel cool and comfortable. You close your eyes, you relax your limbs, let your thoughts roam free. Take me, sleep. Rock me in a cradle of sweet dreams. Quiet. Golden fields of grain billow against the flaming horizon. The ears of wheat dance and frolic and the hot summer wind sings of the coming harvest...

The soft mattress and rose-colored spread thaw out your body. Your languorous blood begins to stir. Men. Men. Their formless, dim faces swim about you. You don't really see them, you only feel the warmth that exudes from them, the vibrations of their masculinity. An ecstasy flows through your blood, and with a sweet pain you stretch out your arms and tense your body...

And sleep fades away.

Anna lay in bed with dry, staring eyes. Sleep had abandoned