Avon Murder Mystery Monthly No. 41 — page 85: what you’re looking at

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

A, MERRITT 87 her arm around me. It whispered and then seemed to float from her and cover me like—like a veil, and from head to foot. It was a quietness and peace that held within it a happiness at one and the same time utterly tranquil and utterly free. “T seemed to be at the doorway to unknown ecstasies—and the life I had known only a dream—and you, all of you—even Martin, dreams within a dream. You weren’t—real—and you did not—matter.” “Hypnotism,” muttered Drake, as she paused. | “No.” She shook her head. “No—more than that. The wonder of it grew—and grew. I thrilled with it. I remember nothing of that ride, saw nothing—except that once through the peace enfolding me pierced warning that Martin was in peril, and I broke through to see him clutching Norhala and to see floating up in her eyes death for him. “And I saved him—and ‘again forgot. Then, when I saw that beauti- ful, Haming Shape—I felt no terror, no fear—only a tremendous—joy- ous—anticipation, as though—as though—” She faltered, hung her head, then leaving that sentence unfinished, whispered: “and when—it—lifted me it was as though I had come at last out of some endless black ocean of despair into the full sun of paradise.” “Ruth!” cried Drake, and at the pain in his cry she winced. “Wait,” she said, and held up a little, tremulous hand. “You asked— and now you must listen.” She was silent; and when once more she spoke her voice was low, curiously rhythmic; her eyes rapt: “I was free—free from every human fetter of fear or sorrow or lové or hate; free even of hope—for what was there to hope for when every- thing desirable was mine? And I was elemental; one with the eternal things yet fully conscious that I was—l. “It was as though I were the shining shadow of a star afloat upon the breast of some still and hidden woodland pool; as though I were a little wind dancing among the mountain tops; a miist whirling down a quiet glen; a shimmering lance of the aurora pulsing in the high solitudes. . } “And there was music—strange and wondrous music and terrible, but not terrible to me—who was part of it. Vast chords and singing. themes that rang like clusters of little swinging stars and harmonies that were like the very voice of infinite law resolving within itself all discords. And all—all—passionless, yet—raptutous. — “Out of the Thing that held me, out from its fires pulsed vitality— a flood of inhuman energy in which I was bathed. And it was as though this energy were—reassembling me, fitting me even closer. to the ele- mental things, changing me fully into them. “T felt the little tendrils touching, caressing—then came the shots. GOGO (GO)