All-Story Weekly, Vol. 112, No. 1 — page 31: what you’re looking at

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

THE ONE GIFT, the Florida hotels while the season was at its height. And yet that second night he had told her that he loved her. In the same breath she was telling her- self that she loved him. They were on the hotel porch. The air was heavy with per- fume. The breeze was as mild as the moonlight. They vé@re as if lifted and car- ried away on a flood of soft music. It was as if they were flying again, but this time in a magical machine; and that fleeting thought that had first come to her while they were taking that other flight was possessing her more strongly than ever. Here was the predestined. She knew now why she had remained aloof and unscathed through all those other courtships that had raged about her—up North, in England, in France and Italy, and, most of all, down here in Florida. But that perversity which keeps men— and women—from acting like angels, had made her.hesitate, had made her put him off; had made her smile at Prince Shuiski (so-called) who had followed her so assidu- ously from St. Augustine and was now ask- ing her for a dance. ‘“T have hurt him!” Muriel Sangree had told herself that night as she undressed for bed. And she was,.thinking of Lieutenant Lathrop, even while she knew that in hurt- ing him she had hurt herself the more. Then, when they had seen each other the next time, it was he who had shown him- self to be perverse. This time, to make amends, she had encouraged him. She had even called him by his first name: “ An- thony!” She had teased him: “ Tony!” But Lathrop now was standing on his young dignity. He would have crushed her in his arms. Instead of that, he was showing him- self to be reserved. He had even pretended to be devoted to another girl. So, to punish him—and do this in the cruelest possible way—she had invited the fellow Shuiski to go along with her and her father’s party on the trip to the Ten Thou- sand Islands and beyend. If the course of true love never does run smooth, it is generally the fault of the pilots and of no one else. What followed was nightmare. - 2 The whole episode, dating from her first encounter with Lieutenant Anthony La~- throp, was nightmare in the light of those subsequent events. She had tolerated Prince Shuiski. She had amused herself with him, as she had amused herself with many men. She had continued to tolerate him and amuse herself with him even after -she had begun to suspect that he was dangerous. She loved danger—loved it for its own sake, as certain men love it. And this was the only form in which real danger conveniently presented itself-—to go gun- ning for ‘this clawed Bengal tiger in human shape, trap him, defy him, get rid of him “at last in any way that suited her. The sense of danger was never so keen as that day Shuiski had invited her to come and see an orchard-garden he had discov- ered. The sense of danger was so keen that inwardly she trembled a little, wanted to draw back, but would not, because that would be cowardly. But how different it might have been if she had invited the lieutenant and not the prince to come along! How wonderful it would have been had Anthony been here in that savage hot-house! There was a bit of forest where every tree was a hanging- garden. There were orchids that were bril- liant, orchids that appeared to be in mourn- ing, orchids that were odorless, and some with a perfume that called to the remotest cells of her being—that stirred her as An- thony had stirred her! | Then the madness of finding herself in the power of unfriendly strangers—a frenzy of battle and flight—exhaustion—other struggles—oblivion—all this under a sky of a perfect purity, in the midst of. a perfect beauty—a jumble of fiendish faces and shreds of paradise—as if the whole world had become a nightmare! “You well!” ‘“‘ Where am I?” ‘No ’flaid. You well.” Muriel Sangree was conscious of a strong arm under her head. There was a smell of broth, fragrant of meat and aromatic herbs, and she opened her lips as instinctively as a hungry babe would have done. The broth was delicious, but it was strange that they COmiIclooOo SS C©