“Surely,” said Palla to Ilse, “these people can’t be Reds!”
“Surely they are!” returned the tall, fair girl calmly. Her face had become flushed, and she stepped to the edge of the curb, her blue, wrathful eyes darkening like sapphires.
A soldier came up beside her. Others, sailors and 145 soldiers, stopped to look. There was a red flag passing. Suddenly Ilse stepped from the sidewalk, wrenched the flag from the burly Jew who carried it, and, with the same movement, shattered the staff across her knee.
Men and women in the ranks closed in on her; a shrill roar rose from them, but the soldiers and sailors, cheering and laughing, broke into the enraged ranks, tearing off red rosettes, cuffing and kicking the infuriated Terrorists, seizing every seditious banner, flag, emblem and placard in sight.
Female Reds, shrieking with rage, clawed, kicked and bit at soldier, sailor and civilian. A gaunt man, with a greasy bunch of hair under a bowler, waved dirty hands above the mêlée and shouted that he had the Mayor’s permission to parade.
Everywhere automobiles were stopping, crowds of people hurrying up, policemen running. The electric lights snapped alight, revealed a mob struggling there in the yellowish glare.
Ilse had calmly stepped to the sidewalk, the fragments of flag and staff in her white-gloved hands; and, as she saw the irresponsible soldiers and blue-jackets wading lustily into the Reds––saw the lively riot which her own action had started––an irresistible desire to laugh seized her.
Clear and gay above the yelling of Bolsheviki and the “Yip––yip!” of the soldiers, peeled her infectious laughter. But Palla, more gentle, stood with dark eyes dilated, fearful of real bloodshed in the furious scene raging in the avenue before her.
A little shrimp of a Terrorist, a huge red rosette streaming from his buttonhole, suddenly ran at Ilse and seized the broken staff and the rags of the red flag. 146 And Palla, alarmed, caught him by the coat-collar and dragged him screeching and cursing away from her friend, rebuking him in a firm but excited voice.
Ilse came over, shouldering her superb figure through the crowd; looked at the human shrimp a moment; then her laughter pealed anew.