Part 7 (1/2)

”No, I'm not. I'll make you tired of me. Tell me, please. Tell me you love me. I feel you've never told me it.”

”I love you more than everything else in life. More than everything.”

”Oh, do you, Erik?”

She pressed herself closer to him, and he felt her body like the heat of a flame avidly caress him.

”I don't want you any different, though,” she whispered. ”When I see other men I get horrified to think that you might become like them--if you didn't love me. Dead, creepy things. Oh, men are horrible. Talk to me, Erik.”

”I can't. I love you. What else is there to say?” His voice trembled and her mouth pressed upon his.

”I don't deserve such happiness,” she said. Tears from her eyes fell like warm wax on his shoulder. Her hands were fumbling distractedly over him.

”Erik,” she gasped, ”my Erik! I wors.h.i.+p you.”

The storm pounded through the night, leaping and bellowing in a halloo of sounds. Dorn tightened his arms mechanically about her warm flesh.

His lips were murmuring tensely, dramatically, ”I love you. I love you.”

And a sadness made a little warmth in his heart. He was alone in the night. His arms and words were engaged in an old make-believe. But this time he felt himself further away. There was no meaning....

He tried vainly to think of Anna, but an emptiness crowded even her name out of his mind. His hands were returning her caresses, mimicking the eager distraction of her own. His mind, removed as if belonging elsewhere, was thinking aimless little words.

There was a storm outside. Lightning.... The war was taking up too much s.p.a.ce in the paper. Crowding out important local news. The Germans would probably get to Paris soon and put an end to it.... Why did Rachel run away? Should he ask her? Sometime. When he saw her. Ask her. Ask her....

His thought drifted into a blank. Then it said ... ”The thing is meaningless. Meaningless. Houses, faces, streets. Nothing, nothing.

There's nothing....”

His wife lay silent, quivering with an ecstasy. Her arms were hungrily choking him. Dorn closed his eyes as if to hide himself. His lips still murmured in a monotone, vague as the voice of a stranger in his ears--responses in an old ritual--”I love you, I love you! Oh, I love you so much!...”

PART II

DREAM

CHAPTER I

In the evening when women stand was.h.i.+ng dishes in the kitchens of the city, men light their tobacco and open newspapers. Later, the women gather up the crumpled sheets and read.

The streets of the city spell easy words--poor, rich--neither.

Here in one part live the grimy-faced workers, their sagging, shapeless women and their litters of children. Their windows open upon broken little streets and bubbling alleys. Idiot-faced wooden houses sprawl over one another with their rumps in the mud. The years hammer away--digesting the paint from houses. The years grind away, yet life persists. Beneath the grinding of the years, life gropes, shrieks, sweats. And in the evening men light their tobacco and open newspapers.

Around a corner the boxes commence. One, two, three, four, and on into thousands stand houses made of stone, and their regimental masonry is like the ticking of a clock. Unvarying windows, doors identical--a stereotype of roofs and chimneys--these hold the homes of the crowds.

Here the vague faces of the streets, the hurrying, enigmatic figures pumping in and out of offices and stores gather to sleep and breed. In the evening the crowds drift into boxes. The multiple destinations dwindle suddenly into a monotone. The confusions of the city's traffic; the winding and unwinding herds that made a picture for the eyes of Erik Dorn, individualize into little human solitudes. The stone houses stand ticking away the years, and within them men and women tick. Doors open and shut, lights go on and off, day and night drop a tick-tock across miles of roofs. And in the hour of the was.h.i.+ng of dishes men kindle their tobacco and read the newspapers.

Slowly, timidly, the city moves away from the little stone boxes.

Automobiles and trees appear. Here begin the ornaments. Marble, bronze, carved and painted brick--a filigree and a scrollwork--put forth claims.