A. Merritt's Fantasy Magazine, April 1950 — page 68: what you’re looking at

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

68 A. MERRITT’S FANTASY answered. “This morning a police inspec- tor came to see me, and we thought it better that he should go to Cheltenham instead of the village for things I needed. They—these people here—think that I— Come into the drawing room.” She stood back from his hold. “Your coat here. I must—”’ She did not end it. He followed her into the room, and saw the heaped fire in the iron basket on the hearth—the bitter wind made it a welcome sight. Standing before it, Kefra faced him, and he heard her long, tremulous sigh—of relief ? “T know,” she said. “You counted the cost, and felt you must be free of me. You could not believe—”’ She left it at that. “T could not believe,” he echoed. “Not being with you, it was all different. And reason rejects—”’ “And now you are with me?” “You are Kefra. There is nobody like you.” Her eyes, all darkness in the firelight, looked full into his own, and he had the sense—justifiable, for once—that all this had been before. Yet this was different, for she was wielding no magic. “You see it is impossible,” she said. “You took and controlled the strength of a thousand men to bring you to me. If you choose to turn a switch, you may hear aman talking or a woman singing on the other side of the world. You might have taken the strength of ten thousand men and come through the air to me. You might have lifted a toy and held it to your ear while you talked to me across the dis- tance. And because I, Kefra, use no toys ‘nor any strength but the knowledge I have gained, you say that reason rejects what { have told you.” “Cold reason,” he said. “With you, I don’t retain cold reason. But—I’m keep- ‘ing all of it that [ can talk like this, and I own it isn’t much. Still—will you un- derstand, I wonder ?—I want to be free of you while I find out—it’s a brutal thing to say, but I don’t mean it to be brutal. | Kefra, if I’m to throw aside everything ‘else for you, as I see must be done, I’ve ot to know more than I know now. I nate to say this, but—I can’t join my life — 0 one who depends on illusion to hold “me. I'd rather end it, and seek the final reality than begin, then have it end.” HE-sat down in the old-fashioned arm- / chair before the fire, and pointed him to its fellow—the one he had occupied when she had made magic in this room. She said: “That was very bravely spoken, and I honor your courage. If I am—if I am a little less than when you went away, still I think, enough remains to answer you.” “T think there is more of you,” he an- swered. “Less of illusion and more of you. Then, you were a whirlwind that swept me up and made me less than myself. Now, you are a woman, worth holding.” He did not attempt to hold her, but sat down, facing her across the firelight. She said: “I let your cold reason guide you, and believe it will impel you to me more surely than if I willed your desire. Be- cause [ can pive as no woman of a day ever gave—but I must give answer to all you would ask, before that may be. You do not come to me, today. You come to one who may have had part in the deaths of two children, and ask if I am that one.” “What I ask, Kefra, is for your own sake. You must see it so.” She brooded a while. As, when he had sat here with her before, he waited; the last of the daylight faded out. She asked: “Would you join your life to mine?” He answered: ‘You need not will my desire, Kefra. Now I see you again, I know—will you join your life to mine?” She said: “Woven into your life—do you remember? I asked you to keep that as my last spoken thought, when you left me. And now you come as a judge— what is it you would judge?”’ Her gaze was compassionate. “You think you have learned all you know of old wisdom in the span of one life, and ask me to express my knowledge in terms of that one life. I said: ‘One with time and you for ever,’ and thus all that you ask of me, I give. How shall I tell you— what shall [ tell your” “About these cats. What is this tale a servant girl is telling about two big yel- lowish cats? I saw those two cats myself, under your hypnotism, or whatever it may have been—and then [ didn’t see them. Here’s a servant girl talking about seeing them, and very nearly being attacked by Eomicbooks.com