Avon Murder Mystery Monthly No. 41 — page 67: what you’re looking at

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

A. MERRITT 69 _ “What have you done to her?” he whispered in Norhala’s own tongue. | Her serene gaze took him in, undisturbed by his anger save for the faintest shadow of wonder, of perplexity. | “Done?” she repeated, slowly. “I have ‘stilled all that was troubled within her—have lifted her above sorrow. I have given her the peace— as Iwill give it to you if—” - .“You'll give me nothing,” he interrupted fiercely; then, his passion breaking through all restraint—“Yes, you damned witch—you'll give ‘me back my sister!” | In his rage he had spoken English; she could not, of course, have understood the words, but their anger and hatred she did understand. Her serenity quivered, broke. The strange stars within her eyes began to glitter forth as they had when she had summoned the Smiting Thing. Unheeding, Ventnor thrust out a hand, caught her roughly by one bare, lovely shoulder. “Give her back to me, I say!” he cried. “Give her back to me!” __ ' .The woman’s eyes grew—awful: Out of the distended pupils the e strange stars blazed; upon her. face was something of the goddess out- raged. I felt the shadow of Death’s wings. | “No! No—Norhala! No, Martin!” the veils of inhuman calm shroud- ing Ruth were torn; swiftly the girl we knew looked out from them. She threw herself between the two, arms outstretched. ~ “Ventnor!” Drake caught his arms, held them tight; “that’s not the way to save her!” | | | Ventnor stood between us, quivering, half sobbing. Never until then had I realized how great, how absorbing was that love of his for Ruth. And the woman saw it, too, even though dimly; envisioned it humanly. For, under the shock of human passion, that which I thought then as utterly unknown to her as her cold serenity was to us, the sleeping soul —I use the popular word for those emotional complexes that are pecul- jar to mankind—stirred, awakened. ~ Wrath fled from her knitted brows; her eyes dropping to the girl, lost their dreadfulness; softened. She turned them upon Ventnor, they brooded upon him; within their depths a half-troubled interest, a ques- tioning. A smile dawned upon the exquisite face, humanizing it, transhiguring | it, touching with tenderness the sweet and sleeping mouth—as a hover- ing dream the lips of the slumbering maid. “And on the face of Ruth, as upon a mirror, I watched that same slow, understanding, tenderness reflected! | “Come,” said Norhala, and led the way through the sparkling cur- tains. As she passed, an arm around Ruth’s neck, I saw the marks of GOGO .S (GO)