Getting in the taxicab Paul was pretty drunk, laughing and hugging her. As soon as they were in the darkness of the back of the taxi they started kissing. Eveline held Paul off for a minute, “Let’s go to your place instead of mine,” she said. “I’m afraid of my concièrge.” “All right… it’s awful little,” said Paul, giggling. “But ish gebibbel, we should worry get a wrinkle.”
When they had gotten past the bitter eyes that sized them up of the old man who kept the keys at Paul’s hotel they staggered up a long chilly winding stair and into a little room that gave on a court. “It’s a great life if you don’t weaken,” said Paul, waving his arms after he’d locked and bolted the door. It had started to rain again and the rain made the sound of a waterfall on the glass roof at the bottom of the court. Paul threw his hat and tunic in the corner of the room and came towards her, his eyes shining.
They’d hardly gotten to bed when he fell asleep with his head on her shoulder. She slipped out of bed to turn the light off and open the window and then snuggled shivering against his body that was warm and relaxed like a child’s. Outside the rain poured down on the glass roof. There was a puppy shut up somewhere in the building that whined and yelped desperately without stopping. Eveline couldn’t get to sleep. Something shut up inside her was whining like the puppy. Through the window she began to see the dark peak of a roof and chimneypots against a fading purple sky. Finally she fell asleep.
Next day they spent together. She’d phoned in to the Red Cross that she was sick as usual and Paul forgot about the Sorbonne altogether. They sat all morning in the faint sunshine at a café near the Madeleine making plans about what they’d do. They’d get themselves sent back home as soon as they possibly could and get jobs in New York and get married. Paul was going to study engineering in his spare time. There was a firm of grain and feed merchants in Jersey City, friends of his father’s he knew he could get a job with. Eveline could start up her decorating business again. Paul was happy and confident and had lost his apologetic manner. Eveline kept telling herself that Paul had stuff in him, that she was in love with Paul, that something could be made out of Paul.
The rest of the month of May they were both a little lightheaded all the time. They spent all their pay the first few days so that they had to eat at little table d’hôte restaurants crowded with students and working people and poor clerks where they bought books of tickets that gave them a meal for two francs or two fifty. One Sunday in June they went out to St. Germain and walked through the forest. Eveline had spells of nausea and weakness and had to lie down on the grass several times. Paul looked worried sick. At last they got to a little settlement on the bank of the Seine. The Seine flowed fast streaked with green and lilac in the afternoon light, brimming the low banks bordered by ranks of huge poplars. They crossed a little ferry rowed by an old man that Eveline called Father Time. Halfway over she said to Paul, “Do you know what’s the matter with me, Paul? I’m going to have a baby.”
Paul let his breath out in a whistle. “Well, I hadn’t just planned for that… I guess I’ve been a stinker not to make you marry me before this…. We’ll get married right away. I’ll find out what you have to do to get permission to get married in the A.E.F. I guess it’s all right, Eveline… but, gee, it does change my plans.”
They’d reached the other bank and walked up through Conflans to the railroad station to get the train back to Paris. Paul looked worried. “Well, don’t you think it changes my plans too?” said Eveline dryly. “It’s going over Niagara Falls in a barrel, that’s what it is.”
“Eveline,” said Paul seriously with tears in his eyes, “what can I ever do to make it up to you?… honest, I’ll do my best.” The train whistled and rumbled into the platform in front of them. They were so absorbed in their thoughts they hardly saw it. When they’d climbed into a third class compartment they sat silent bolt upright facing each other, their knees touching, looking out of the window without seeing the suburbs of Paris, not saying anything. At last Eveline said with a tight throat, “I want to have the little brat, Paul, we have to go through everything in life.” Paul nodded. Then she couldn’t see his face anymore. The train had gone into a tunnel.
Newsreel XXXIV
WHOLE WORLD IS SHORT OF PLATINUM
Il serait Criminel de Negliger Les Intérêts Français dans les Balkans
KILLS SELF IN CELL
the quotation of United Cigar Stores made this month of $167 per share means $501 per share for the old stock upon which present stockholders are receiving 27 % per share as formerly held. Through peace and war it has maintained and increased its dividends
6 TRAPPED ON UPPER FLOOR
How are you goin’ to keep ’em down on the farm
After they’ve seen Paree
If Wall street needed the treaty, which means if the business interests of the country properly desired to know to what extent we are being committed in affairs which do not concern us, why should it take the trouble to corrupt the tagrag and bobtail which forms Mr. Wilson’s following in Paris?
ALLIES URGE MAGYAR PEOPLE TO UPSET
BELA KUN REGIME
11 WOMEN MISSING IN BLUEBEARD MYSTERY
Enfin La France Achète les stocks Américains
How are you goin’ to keep ’em away from Broadway
Jazzin’ around
Paintin’ the town
the boulevards during the afternoon presented an unwonted aspect. The café terraces in most cases were deserted and had been cleared of their tables and chairs. At some of the cafés customers were admitted one by one and served by faithful waiters, who, however, had discarded their aprons
YEOMANETTE SHRIEKS FOR FORMER SUITOR AS
SHE SEEKS DEATH IN DRIVE APARTMENT
DESIRES OF HEDJAZ STIR PARIS CRITICS
in order not prematurely to show their colors a pretense is made of disbanding a few formations; in reality however, these troops are being transferred lock stock and barrel to Kolchak
I.W.W. IN PLOT TO KILL WILSON
Find 10,000 Bags of Decayed Onions
FALL ON STAIRS KILLS WEALTHY CITIZEN
the mistiness of the weather hid the gunboat from sight soon after it left the dock, but the President continued to wave his hat and smile as the boat headed towards the George Washington
OVERTHROW OF SOVIET RULE SURE
The House of Morgan
I commit my soul into the hands of my savior, wrote John Pierpont Morgan in his will, in full confidence that having redeemed it and washed it in His most precious blood, He will present it faultless before my heavenly father, and I intreat my children to maintain and defend at all hazard and at any cost of personal sacrifice the blessed doctrine of complete atonement for sin through the blood of Jesus Christ once offered and through that alone,