Love Is My Reason Read Online Free PDF Page B

gate, ” he said, still smiling, but with a touch of obstinacy. “ It ’ s rather lacking in respect. ”
    “ To him? ” She looked even more surprised.
    “ No, my dear. To you. ”
    “ To me ?” She stared at him and coloured slowly, and he saw that to be considered worthy of respect gave her the most delicious and unfamiliar sensation.
    “ My name is Anya Beranova, ” she said, and instinctively she drew herself up slightly and spoke with a sort of youthful dignity which he found touching. “ But, ” she added naively, “ you had better say the whole name, because he won ’ t know me as anything but Anya. ”
    “ I will say the whole name, ” he promised gravely. “ And I shall do my best to bring my friend tomorrow afternoon. Is this your shop? ’ And he stopped the car before a brightly lighted delicatessen store which obviously knew nothing about a forty-eight-hour week.
    “ Yes. This is the place. ” She smiled at him. And then, as he leaned across to open the car door, she stammered. “ I don ’ t know what to say, mein Herr—how to thank you—there are no words — ”
    “ That ’ s all right. ” He smiled and held out his hand to her. “ Don ’ t thank me until I have really done something. The important thing is to get a doctor to your father. ”
    She did not answer that. For a moment she looked at his hand as though doubtful what he intended her to do with it. Then, to his profound embarrassment, she lifted it gently in her thin fingers and kissed it.
    “ Here, you mustn ’ t do that! ” He sounded almost annoyed because he was so shocked.
    “ But I like to do it, ” she said. Then she gave him that quick, fugitive smile and, slipping out of the car, she ran across the pavement and into the shop, without a backward glance.
    David drove slowly back to his hotel, where he was astonished to find that, so little time had his dramatic experience really taken, the rest of his party were still lingering over dinner.
    In their various ways they all looked slightly curious when he joined them. But only Bertram questioned him, and that lazily.
    “ What took you out again, so soon after we had all come in? ” he enquired. “ The desk-clerk said a Fraulein had come and fetched you away, which sounded intriguingly like a cut between a nursery game and the beginning of a mystery story. ”
    “ I suppose it was something like a mystery story, ” David conceded, and he picked up the menu and studied it, so that he need not look at anyone in particular.
    “ David, what do you mean? ” His aunt sounded half amused, half apprehensive. “ Who was the Fraulein? ”
    “ Anya. She asked me to go and see her father. He ’ s v ery ill. ”
    The statement was made in a deliberately matter-of-fact tone. But nothing could take away from its incongruity — or its unwelcome quality so far as most of his hearers were concerned.
    Again it was left to Bertram to ask carelessly of his cousin,
    “ Anya? Who is she? ”
    “ The D.P. David spoke to the other day, ” Lady Ranmere said, before her nephew could reply for himself. “ But why on earth should she come to you , David? ”
    “ There was no one else, ” he replied briefly.
    “ But there must have been, ” objected Mrs. Preston. “ There are camp officials, surely? And what about the other people in the camp? She must know some of them well. Whereas you are a stranger. ”
    Her tone implied that he should also remain one.
    “ Her father seems to have a rooted objection to the German officials. And as for the other people in the camp, it ’ s hard to describe the isolation and indifference which utter misery breeds, ” David said, out of the depths of his new and painful knowledge. “ Anyway, you must just take it from me that there was no one else to whom she could appeal. ”
    “ So you went with her to the camp? ” That was Celia, speaking with her usual cool self-possession, which for once f aintly irritated him, instead of pleasing