Adventure Magazine Cover — page 59: what you’re looking at

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

The Web of the Sun She flung out her arms in a passion of self-revelation. She was on the verge of sobbing. The pin he had given her pulled loose. The word “marriage” on Tilita’s lips set up a surprizing emotional resonance in the white man. It amazed him that she held the same thought that he had just indulged. A sudden hammering filled his chest. ‘“Why—Tilita—” he said shakenly, “I— I don’t think you are strange——”’ “But that man said os “It makes no difference—”’ His voice was cut off by a sort of stricture in his throat. ‘My little prima,” he said husk- ily. He reached out toward her. At the touch of her flesh, a sort of languor flowed up his arms and filled his body. The notion that she was “strange,” that any atom of her was “strange” to him! With his lips to her ear, he whispered shakily— “Tilita, carissima, the blood in my heart is not more——” __ He wavered into silence as her warmth and softness filled his arms. He could feel her trembling. He, himself, was so shaken he could hardly stand. The smell of milk on her lips and throat was headier than wine. : “T was so afraid I would be a strange wife——”’ Heaven only knew what construction she placed upon the word ‘‘strange.”’ They remained clinging to each other. To stand became a burden. By common impulse they moved across to a tree. By glancing down the man could see her black lashes outlined against her cheek and the irregular lift and fall of her bosom. A sun splotch fell through a rent in her bodice and filled it with half lights. Because he meant to marry her, Lassiter fumbled, trying to close the tear. At touch of her a great weakness seized him. It beat in his chest, it throbbed in his neck, it swam in his brain. And yet it was a kind of rest. tC) this transfiguration, he never knew. It was a moment; it was an eter- nity. It had no connection with Time. Time was a pipe organ chanting its proces- sional and its recessional, but in its midst, Time ceased. 7 it came vaguely to Lassiter that such HOW long Lassiter experienced 49 ecstasy was the goal of life; that all life was like an ocean and this wave of divinity moved through its floods. For an instant it lifted all men and all women to its im- descent crest. Then passed on. Other droplets would take their places, but that man and that woman would never again know ecstasy. Yet the wave was perpetual. It rode on and on through existence, leaping at the sky, shot with rainbows, scattering jewels, a delirious immortality, composed of in- stants, a Buddha of bliss, composed of fading entities. Very slowly the jungle reformed about the lovers. The trees dripped with light. The silhouette of a monkey passed across their luminous background. A little bird flung out a triumphant phrase over the cap- ture of a worm. The promoter watched the little gladia- tor idly. It was a striped bird with a yellow breast. Lassiter had seen such songsters in Central Park. Such tiny crea- tures drift from the arctic to the tropics with the shifting seasons, a migration of jewels. His musing brought the promoter a no- tion of tying a message to one of these birds and communicating with the outside world. If he should send numbers of these messages out year after year, surely some one would salvage one and learn the strange secret of Motobatl. Tilita moved as if conscious that their two thought currents had separated one from the other. She sat up, drew 4a little way from Lassiter, blinked her eyes and smiled at him as if aroused from a deep sleep. They began talking of their mar- riage. The girl told Lassiter of the wed- ding ceremony in Motobatl. When they were married, Lassiter would have to run after her and catch her against the com- bined efforts of all her kinspeople. “All of them?” “Oh, yes,” she nodded brightly. “Will they try hard to stop me?” _ Tilita broke into the most decorative laughter. “Indeed they will! Oh, it’s exciting! You'll get knocks with sticks and stones; you'll be tripped—”’ Then she noticed his lengthening face and comforted him, “Oh. it will make no difference to you, carissima. You will feel nothing. No groom does. Once a man came out with his head all NOOK (C©