A. Merritt's Fantasy Magazine, October 1950 — page 34: what you’re looking at

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

THE ELIXIR OF HATE out before him. “Can this be true? Am I really Dr. Granville Dennison, of New York City?” And, taking out his card- case, he eagerly read his own name upon a bit of pasteboard. Even that proof, dimly visible in the pale light, could hardly con- vince him. Tranced with the mystery, the wonder of it all, he wandered down the path. Deeply he breathed the incense of that tropic night; with ecstasy he hark- ened to the mad, trolling cascades of melody from the orange-grove. Up to the large, white, southern stars he turned his face, where still showed traces of glad tears. And so, walking as perhaps Balder might have done, on his return from the lower regions, he came to the vine-bow- ered -pergola and entered there. Far below, the threnody of the eternal surf rose, fell, resounded with rhythmic cadence. He leaned and looked down through the blue air; gleaming in the moonlight he. saw the crawling lacery of foam that fingered up, up, then burst in fans of spray and fell, asparkle, back into . the restless flood. And suddenly, inexplic- ably, a huge desire assailed him to plunge to swim, to battle with the brine there at the base of the huge cliff. Shuddering a trifle, he retreated. For a moment he stood looking through the garden. Peace, calm and tenderly benig- nant, brooded over the world. Far through the groves, a dull black shadow betrayed the presence of the house. All was dark there, save for one tiny chink of light in an ypper window. This slit of radiance glimmered fitfully and eerily through the half-obscurity. “Il Vecchio’s room?” thought he. “Or maybe Stasia’s ?”’ And recollection stabbed him. For a brief instant he realized the enormity, the horrible treason of his deed. But only for an instant. The fresh-pulsing tides of life within his veins seemed by their very intensity to banish retrospec- tion. His thoughts refused to dwell upon the past. As oil withdraws from water, so his mind slid from regrets or self-ac- cusation. It was as though the past were dead, and only the present, the future, en- dowed with the essence of reality. “That’s over and gone!” cried he, rais- ing both arms on high, his face. to heaven. “Done! Irrevocable! From now on, life! Life anew! Life eternal, indestructible! 33 Life, and love, and happiness beyond the dreaming of the human soul!’ CHAPTER 8 Down The Precipice AWN, glowing in turquoise and crimson over the sea, found him transfigured and aglow with won- drous hopes, with keen, delicious, intoxi- cating foretastes of immortality ; the name of Stasia on his lips, her memory and magic in his heart. As the lighthouse on Les Saintes Maries, far up the curving coast, ceased its intermittent stabbing gleam, and as the gray sea mists rolled up in billowing gold- en fleece before the sun, once more that ‘passionate longing possessed the Ameri- cat to try his returning strength in the surf. “No, no, this is mere madness,” he ex- claimed, trying to quiet the desire. “Why, these twenty years past I haven't even so much as ventured to dip in salt water! I’ve had to confine myself to tepid splash- ings in porcelain—and even those only in the greatest moderation. What am I think- ing of? I, who only yesterday was a dying man!” : Pacing the length of the pergola, he sought to banish his unruly thoughts. Yet they would not down. “Why not?” the question still recurred. He stopped and looked at his hands. Sure- ly, these were quite different from the meager, flabby things of yesterday! The morning light showed them already filled out—firm, strong, like those of a man in his prime. Dennison stripped up his sleeve. “Ah!” he breathed in overwhelmed surprise. He doubled his biceps, clenched his fist, and stood there a moment, work- ing his fist, and stood there a moment, working his regenerated fingers, to watch the lay and interplay of the cords and tendons. Wide-eyed, he stared in frightened realization of the miracle. Too new, too strange yet for it to have won through the realms of firm belief. Still he half doubted. ‘‘Can it be?’’ he cried. “Science denies it, the whole world scoffs at it— yet it is!” He tore open his shirt, felt his shoul- COMICDOCKKS (C(O)