Avon Fantasy Reader No. 8 — page 117: what you’re looking at

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

THE CANAL 113 that. Rather this old boat, rather a deserted grave under the stars, for my home!” : A boundless surprise swept over me, and a positive feeling of kinship with this strange being, whose face I had hardly seen, possessed me. So I myself might have spoken, so I had often felt, though I had never dreamed of putting my thoughts so definitely, so forcibly. My regularized daytime life was a thing I thought little of; I really lived only in my nocturnal prowlings. Why, this girl was right! All of life should be free, and spent in places that interested and attracted. How little, how little I knew, that night, that dread forces were tugging at my soul, were finding entrance to it and easy access through the morbid weakness of my nature! How little I knew at what a cost I deviated so radically from my kind, who herd in cities and love well-lit ways and the sight of man, and sweet and wholesome places to be solitary in, when the desire for solitude comes over them!. : That night it seemed to me that there was but one important thing in life - —to allay the angry passion my unfortunate words had aroused in the breast of my beloved, and to win from her some answering feeling. “IT understand—much better than you think,” I whispered tremulously. “What I want is to see you again, to come to know you, and to serve you in any way that I may. Surely, there must be something in which I can be of use to you. All you have to do from tonight on for ever, is to command me. I swear it!” | “You swear that—you do swear it?” Delighted at the eagerness of her words, I lifted my hand toward the dark heavens. “I swear it. From this night on, for ever—I swear it.” “Then listen. Tonight you may not come to me, nor I to you: I do not want you to board this boat—not tonight, net any night. And most of all, not any day. But do not look so sad. I will come to you. No, not tonight, perhaps not for many nights—yet before very long. I will come to you there, on the bank of the canal, when the water in the canal ceases to flow.” I must have made a gesture of impatience, or of despair. It sounded like a way of saying “never’’—for why should the water in the canal cease to flow? She read my thoughts in some way, for she answered them. “You do not understand. I am speaking seriously—I am promising to meet you there on the bank, and soon. For the water within these banks is moving slower, always slower. Higher up, I have heard that the canal has been drained. Between these lower locks, the water still seeps in and drops slowly, slowly downstream. But there will come a night when it will be quite, quite Stagnant—and on that night I will come to you. And when I come, I will ask of you a favor. And you will keep your oath.”