Avon Fantasy Reader No. 7 — page 104: what you’re looking at

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

100 } FRANK BELKNAP LONG, JR- 4 HAT A perfectly adorable ruin,” said Miss Beardsley. “I love deepest gloom, and this place is as mournful as Erebus! The perversity of nature has entered into the rocks; they seem alive!” “These people worshipped a curious pantheon,” I explained. “Ishtar was represented here. Hellish rites were performed on the altar before you. The modern mind cannot conceive them, and to describe them would require the invention of a new language. These piles are older than Stonehenge or Egypt. They antedate the pyramids by thousands of years, and probably go back to the neolithic age.” “Who was Ishtar?” asked Miss Beardsley. ; “The great mother goddess, the magna mater of the Babylonians, the Assyrians and darker, more sinister peoples whose civilizations were legends in the age of Homer. The worship of Ishtar, variously called Innanna, Nina, Astarte, extended over the whole of Asia; and her altars are to be found in Persia, India, China, Arabia and Siberia. . . . Ishtar’s earthly counterpart was a woman of devastating beauty, who possessed the cruel and vicious nature of the Roman empress Messalina. In Nineveh, in Tyre, in Erech her terrestrial manifestations lured camel-drivers in from the desert, and destroyed them with kisses. It has been estimated that her victims in a single year outnum- bered armies of locusts!” Miss Beardsley scowled and poked with her parasol among gray, antiquated stones. “It isn’t that I don’t trust you. But they told me in the village that native girls walk here at night and pretend to be reincarnations of that goddess.” “The native girls are very ugly,” I assured her. “They have flat noses and square ears and they wear rings through their lips. No white man could love them,” “T never liked them,” murmured Miss Beardsley. : I took Miss Beardsley’s hand and smiled into her nervous blue eyes. I found her anger more delightful than the impecunious glory of archeology, but like most stubborn men I invariably sought excuses. “There is no truth in those silly old tales,” I said, “But it zs something to sleep here. The place is haunted and it will give me prestige.” . connlicloooks.con