A. Merritt's Fantasy Magazine, December 1949 — page 18: what you’re looking at

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

es A. MERRITT’S FANTASY ae 2 . . * . = ge oe sis, and did. He nearly convinced me. deed, visualizing again what he had made me see, I was not sure that he hadn’t ~ convinced me. J began to feel a strong interest in this - Dr. de Keradel. The name was Breton, like my own, and as unusual. Another Ree recollection fitted through my mind. There was a reference to the de Keradels in the chronicles of the de Caranacs, as we were once named. I looked it up. There had been no love lost between the two. families, to put it mildly. Altogether, what I read blew my desire to meet Dr. de Keradel up to fever point... . I was half an hour late getting to Dr. 2 2 Bs _ Lowell’s. The butler showed me into the library. A girl got up from a big chair and came toward me with hand out- stretched. “Hello, Alan,” she said. I blinked at her. She wasn’t so tall, but pz her body had all the lovely contours the sculptors of Athens’ golden age gave their dancing girls. The provocative dress of filmy black she wore hid none of them. Her hair was burnished copper and _ hel- meted her small head. The heavy chignon at the nape of her neck showed she had resisted the bob. Her eyes were golden © amber, and tilted delicately. Her nose was - small and straight, and her chin rounded. Her skin was not the creamy white that so often goes with red heads, but a delicate golden. It was a head and face that might have served as the model for one of Alexander’s finest golden coins. Faintly archaic, touched with the antique beauty. I blinked again. I blurted: “You're never—Helen!”’ HER eyes sparkled, the impishness that my experience with the hornets had set indelibly in my memory danced over her face. She sighed: “The same, Alan! The same! And you—oh, let me look at you! Yes, still the hero of my girlhood! The same keen, _ dark face—like—like—I used to call you Lancelot of the Lake, Alan—to myself, of course. The same lithe, tall and slender body—I used to call you the Black Pan- ther, too, Alan. And do you remember ‘how like a panther you leaped down when tthe hornets stung you” She bent her head, her rounded shoul: ders shaking with the memory. I said: “You little devil! I always knew you did that deliberately.” She said, muffled: “I’m not laughing, Alan. I’m sobbing.” She looked up at me, and her eyes were indeed wet, but I was sure not with any tears of regret: She said: “Alan, for long, long years I’ve waited to know something. Waited to hear you tell me something. Not to tell me that you love me, darling— No! No! I always knew that you were going to do that, sooner or later. This is something else—” I was laughing, but I had a queer mixed feeling, too. I said: “I'll tell you anything. Even that I loved you—and maybe mean it.” ‘ She said: “Did you find those snakes in your bed? Or did they crawl out before . you got in?” ; I said again: “You little devil!” She said: “But were they there?” “Yes, they were.” She sighed contentedly : “Well, there’s one complex gone for- ever. Now I know. You were so damned superior at times I just couldn’t help it.” She held her face up to me: “Since you're going to love me, Alan, you might as well kiss me.” I kissed her, properly. She might have been fooling with me about having been her girlhood hero, but there was no fooling about my kiss—nor the way she responded to it. She shivered and laid her head on my shoulder, She said, dreamily: “And there’s another complex gone. Where am I going to stop?” Somebody coughed at the doorway. Somebody else murmured, apologetically : “Ah, but we intrude.” Helen dropped her arms from around my neck and we turned. In a way, I realized that the butler and another man were standing at the door. But all I could focus my eyes upon was the girl— or woman—who stood there with them. You know how it is when you're rid- ing in the subway, or at the theater, or at a race track and suddenly one face, for some reason or no reason, thrusts itself out from the crowd, and it’s as though > your mental spotlight was turned on it and every other face gets misty and re- a” «ae “ < cedes into the background. That often ° 4 ~ on - «hes “ - an - aes = E : Le as 2S ae Ss = m) Sy ~