Page:Storm Over Paris.pdf/82

writer or painter-but she had shackled him with children. And she kept conceiving - with the same fertility which had plagued her mother. It was as if Life, with vindictive irony, assailed her womb despite all her precautions, breaking through every artificial barrier invented by man.

In the long hours of silence, Gertrude had learned to "study" her husband. It was as though his nerves lay open and exposed before her; and she was careful not to put too much strain on that quivering maze of sensitivity. She pretended not to notice when he spilled a glass of milk, or let a plate fall from his hands, or forgot half of the purchases she had marked on the shopping list. She didn't disturb him when he sat late over a book, although it was time for him to go to bed, with the scar at his right ear flaming and the pulsing arteries on his forehead reaching up like the blades of a pair of shears.

Sometimes he would fall into sullen and unreasonable silences, not opening his mouth for hours at a time, even for a whole day. At such times the burden of his strange quiet would weigh so heavily on her that she would break into tears; then a guilty, pitiful smile would form on his lips, a smile more difficult to endure than his silences. When he was quiet and lost in thought he seemed to her gigantic, mighty, almost unreachable, like a god; but when he began to stammer and smile in his embarrassed way her heart would sink with pain, beaten and defeated by Life.

She, his wife, his friend, his life's companion, could not bear his feeling of defeat-she, who never refused him her body, no matter how tired and depressed she might feel. Even when his frantic caresses meant nothing but pain to her, even then she surrendered, not wanting for a single moment to injure his deepest feelings.

In the evening, after the day's work, Anna took over the