Page:Storm Over Paris.pdf/95

groans would be a cooling breeze to his heart. His friends laughed at him when he plunged into these wild passions, this romantic agony.

"He's just trying to be different," the tall Heinz remarked.

"Not so much different, as dramatic," Elsa corrected him. "He imagines that the dramatic mask becomes him. After all, it's quite a theatrical pose. To fall in love with a Jewess!" Her thick rouged lips twisted into an obscene sneer, and then her wrath flushed through her white skin in spots of angry red. "That Jew bitch," she muttered.

His lips pressed firmly together, Eric sat motionless, as though what they were saying was no concern of his. A thick cloud of cigarette smoke hung from the cafe ceiling, over the heads of the dancing couples in the center of the floor. Here and there a profile would suddenly emerge from the mist, or a head of loosely waving hair. Alongside the triangle of an elbow propped on a table the searching glance of a girl cut right to his heart. She was wearing the same navy blue costume, the white blouse; she even had the same general appearance. But it wasn't Anna.

A group of Eric's friends came over to the table-the short-sighted Fritz, Kurt from Vienna, and the dainty Gerta. The talk veered to the People's Front. Fritz was of the opinion that it couldn't last.

"That remains to be seen," Kurt remarked, gesturing with his hand over the table.

"What do you mean?" Fritz moved closer.

"I mean it depends on a good many factors."

"For example?" Fritz jabbed Kurt with his elbow and sprawled forward over the table, almost overturning a glass. "You're the kind, my friend," he went on in a shrill, almost falsetto voice, "who always has to look at the pros and cons. But me-I'm different. I don't admit any ifs, ands or buts.