10 Short Novels Magazine — page 87: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

tive embrace. I knew only a fierce, burn- ing joy, an inexpressible passion—until the kiss ended. Then, as though only the contact of our lips had held it at bay, my earlier panic swept back over me, and I raised my eyes again to the towering figure in sable armor there in the center of the room. Dusk was thickening rapidly, now, and the confusion of shadows in that place made it impossible to distinguish any ob- ject clearly. Yet I could have sworn I saw that figure move! The great, square-shouldered body seemed to turn slowly in its saddle, until the visored helmet was facing toward me; and I felt as though a pair of ferocious eyes were glaring at me out of the slits in the steel. My nerves tensed in answer to a voiceless warning—and then relaxed as a soft, musical voice brought me back to the girl in my arms. , “We have found each other!” she cried, and pressed her cheek close against my chest. “Thank heaven—at last!’ I can give no truly logical account of what followed that evening. If there is coherence in my telling of what hap- pened, it is a coherence gained in retro- spect. Looking back, I seem to myself to have gone through that period like a drugged person, with my critical facul- ties almost completely in abeyance—only occasionally rising to some degree of ob- jectivity. At those times it was as though I had suddenly awakened from a strange, en- thralling dream; and I looked about me with wondering eyes to fmd conditions still as they had been in my dream. The first of these periods of compara- tive lucidity occurred just as we were entering my apartment—for we had come as instinctively to my home as we had gone into each other’s arms. As I opened the door for her, and crossed the threshold after her, I had that initial ~ sensation of emerging from a dream. I stopped, and gently taking her shoulders in my hands, I turned her about until her calm, luminous dark eyes were gaz- ing into mine. : I stared at her, my awakened brain overwhelmed with the joyful assurance that it was not a dream—that this mirac- ulous thing was true and concrete. Again { took her in my arms and kissed her, and my burning delight was doubled in the knowledge of the realness of that em- b race. “Tel] me,” I said then, “what has hap- pened to us? Who are you? What is your name?” Her reaction to my questions was strange and alarming. “She fell away Black Knight's Bondage * * * 85 from me a step or two, her expression one of frightened incredulity. “But don’t you know?” she gasped. “Ts it possible that you don’t know me, Reinald?” A coldness crept into my heart. Was it to end, so soon? Was this miraculous happiness, this perfect love that had come to me the result of some ghastly mistake — some ridiculous and tragic error in identity? No, no! That was un- thinkable. I could never relinquish this girl, whether she had mistaken me for some else, or not. She was mine, and I would never give her up to any man! “I—I am sure I do, really,” I said haltingly, but my eyes retreated from hers, and I stared at the floor as I went on with my awkward lie. “I feel that I have always known you—that we have been intended for each other since the be- ginning of time. But—but I can’t think of your name.«.«i.:.” She came close to me again, and caught the lapels of my coat as she gazed ques- tioningly up into my eyes. eprnt your name—it is Reinald, isn’t i aes I saw it was no use. I might success- fully delude her about my ignorance con- cerning her; but she was sure to discover my real name. “No,” I said miserably, “my name is not Reinald. It is Roger—Roger Ken- naston.” She gave a start, but at mention of my family name she cried out, with a little scream of joy, and flung arms about my neck. “But, of course!” she laughed. “Your name would not be Reinald—now! You are Kennaston, though—and Reinald and Roger—and the White Knight!” I stiffened with a jerk—remembering the white-armored knight in the little warrior group at the curio shop—as a sensation like an electric shock shot through me. “The White Knight!” I cried. “Oh, why can’t I remember?” Ancestral voices seemed to be whisper- ing in my brain. Where had I heard of the White Knight? It had some imme- diate, personal significance to me—that much I knew. But full knowledge, or re- membrance, remained tantalizingly just beyond my reach. 7 The girl, her face sober again, was looking up at me. “It is strange, very strange,” she said, “that I should re- member, and you not. May be in time .».. But perhaps it is better so, for a while, anyhow. We do not know yet —what the future holds for us. It may Suddenly she shivered, and her lumi- mM (E <S (ee) JOO) Eom nS nN iin