Eva's Sins.

XXXVII

"One must show to the traitors what is their place in this world"

  It had been already several months since Stan and Beth were in London, but they couldn't nowise find Eva, and in time it seemed to the two of them that this huge and crowded city was guilty of all that happened to them and to the others.

  "Do you think that we'll find her someday? I mean, if we'll find Miss Stonebridge one day," Beth asked Stan one evening when they got out of their usual den and they decided to watch the beauty of the stars that had scattered all over the sky and were amazingly sparkling around with their yellow blinks of life.

  Stan instead answered nothing, for he didn't know what answer to give to the girl, and in these months since they were here he told the girl already all the lies his little head was capable to say, but none of his predictions didn't come true, and this gave him the sensation that he is somehow at the border of a nervous breakdown and not because they couldn't find a grumpy, heartless young lady, how he used to call Eva, when he was only with Moon, because he never dared to say such words in front of Beth, for her tears immediately flowed on her cheeks and she could be angry with him for days, and the boy most hated not being able to talk to her.

  His problems were related to the fact that winter was fast approaching the capital of England, and they still didn't find a permanent place where to settle down and to be enough warm to shelter all three and more than this, he couldn't tell Beth about this problem, because he didn't want to scare her, but it was approaching the time to the weather be cold and Stan became more and more anxious.

  "I'm not afraid of me, because I'm used to enduring days with bad weather and cold nights that cut you to the bones, but how to force her to stay in such a place, where even God doesn't exist and where you don't know certainly if you see the day of tomorrow?!"

  He also thought about breaking up with Beth and forcing her to commit in some house of rich people as a servant, but only mentioning such a possibility Beth raised such a fuss that forced the boy to step back and to keep silent for a long while.

  "You want to get rid of me, don't you? Of me and of Moon. We are a burden to you, don't we? If so, then just say it and we are bailing as quickly as possible, even today and I swear that you won't ever see us again!" the girl answered sharply at his simple phrase: "What if you commit to someone else's service, Beth? Look, the weather ...," but the girl didn't stay to listen to him and right away attacked him with words, and this made the boy feel uncomfortable, especially because he wasn't used to withstanding the onslaught of women.

  He could withstand to the life of the street, where he was living alone and he could fight only with drifters like he was, for stealing a dry and moldy crust of bread, because the beggars could fight till the last drop of blood for this piece of life, thrown by someone rich and satiated enough to afford to throw such life-giving goodness because it was the survival for some of them and a possibility to see a day off tomorrow.

  But what for others to throw a piece of bread was nothing, for the poor men and especially for the beggars like Stan, that small crust of bread, gnawed in places by mice or other street creatures, was a luxury that they couldn't find every day.

  "Stan, do you think that the cold times will catch us here? and Stan awoke of his daydream, listening to the girl's question and, turning his head toward Beth, he watched her like a dumb for a short time, because he saw himself pushed to the wall by girl's words, who was watching now the sky with her round and small mouse eyes, in which the happiness was blinking, for even if that question of her was related to their life and uncertain future, her heart was clean, as was her glance, which couldn't lie, especially while watching the beauty of that world, which floats in the hight of the sky, far away from our world.