Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 24: what you’re looking at

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

$14 in tripping over a projection and tottering a bit toward him. With perfect courtesy he had instantly straightened her up. Her answer had been a trifle smothered and might have been either a ‘‘ damn” or n “JT am.” With innate politeness and assurance he had chosen the latter. But her strange and sudden tendency toward in- stability had not ceased with their having found seats on the top of the bowlder. More than once Drusilla’s accustomed poise had betrayed her and, had it not been for the quickness of his eyes and the strength of his arms, she might very well have sustained a nasty fall of fifteen feet or so to the ground. Something indeed, he decided, had gone shockingly wrong with her center of bal- ance. Furthermore, in some amazing fash- ion, she seemed to have become electrically charged, for he received a distinct and un- accountably thrilling shock every time he caught her and set her up again. “TI wonder,” he finally suggested hus- kily, “ if I hadn’t better just keep my arm where it is. It might be safer.” It was around her waist. “Tt might and it mightn’t,” murmured Drusilla dreamily, as she sharpened her estoque—that heavy, flat-bladed sword which has brought more than one good toreadored bull to an untimely end—for the estocada. - It was at this point that she had mur- mured her ‘‘ Ah,” and ‘‘ The moon.” “To think,” said Ramier with a quick~ ening note of interest in his voice, “ that we should somehow feel the moon’s influ- ence even—”’ Drusilla held her breath during the in- finitesimal pause. Would the man—wowld the man, she wondered, wake up now? ‘“Eyen,” continued Ramier, with more fervor, “ though it is two hundred and thirty-cight thousand and eight hundred miles away.” Drusilla expelled her breath. In one is charming it might possibly have been said that ee snorted. “ Bother!” she said sharply. “ Oh, both- er—bother—bother!” » “You aren’t well,” Ramier announced ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. with conviction as, alarmed, he squeezed her tighter. She tested the squeeze and subsided. Why was he so dear and so dumb? She knew that he loved her, but how, within bounds, was she ever going to make him know it himself? “You have still to comment on the moonlight on the pool,” she said in a small, frigid voice. “‘ It is beautiful—beautiful— and has a mean, if not positively wicked, velocity of one hundred and eighty-five thousand miles per second.” ‘One hundred and eighty-six thou- sand,” corrected Ramier calmly. And she burst into tears. Ramier was inexpressibly shocked and at a complete loss as to what to do, He start- ed to release her, but her tears seemed to flow in inverse ratio with the pressure of his arm around her waist. The tighter he squeezed, the less, as he explained it, her tears flew—or flewed—he was really very much mixed up—whereas the slightest let- ting down of any even recently added pressure shot the tears up whole volumes, “Stop it!” he said. ‘ For Heaven’s sake, Drusilla, stop it!” The use of her given name—it was the first time he had essayed it—rewarded him with a temporary check in the flow. “V-very well, Ramier,” she said, once more settling her head more firmly against his shoulder. He looked at her hair; at the brief ex- panse of forehead showing beneath it. A not uncomfortable luxuriance giddied about inside of him. He wondered what on earth he was doing. He did it again. “Do you realize that you are kissing my forehead?” murmured Drusilla. “What of it?” he growled stiffly. «Just as you say, Ramier.” “Why shouldn’t—Drusilla, why should we not get married?” “ For the sake of—science?” “We have the same tastes—the same training—we could go on through life to- gether, devoting our combined minds and ideals to great researches—” Drusilla. took the suggestion and gave it a careful once-over, oO CcoImmiclooks.€© nn