What if we came to an explanation tonight and ended this long delirium?

Was it not time? Had not my weeks of endurance earned me this right?

Resolution mounted in me, defiant and strong.

The evening had pa.s.sed to an hour when I might look for the girl to come. I switched off the lights, and sat down to keep our nightly tryst.

In the darkness of the haunted room, the thoughts I would have held at bay rushed upon me as clamorous besiegers.

Desire! Desire of the world! Desire of mine and of the unhuman Thing, did we grasp at Eve or Lilith? At the fire on the hearth or the cold phosph.o.r.escence of swamp and marsh?

A drift of fragrance was afloat on the air. A delicate stir of movement pa.s.sed by me. I raised my head from my hands, expectant.

"I am here," her familiar voice told me.

"Desire, you had to come, tonight."

Some quality in my voice carried to her a message beyond the words. But she did not break into exclamation or question as another woman might.

She was mute, as one who stands still to find the path before taking a step.

"You are angry," she said at last. "Something here has gone badly for you; I knew that before I entered this room."

"How can you say that?" I challenged. "If you are like other men and women, how can you know what happens when you are absent? How do you know what pa.s.ses between the Thing from the Frontier and me?"

"I do not know unless you tell me, Roger. If I feel from afar when you are in sorrow, why, so do many people feel with another in sympathy."

"You feel more than ordinary sympathy can," I retorted.

"Then, perhaps it is not an ordinary sympathy I have for you, Roger."

Her very gentleness struck wrong on my perverted mood. Was she trying to turn me from my purpose with her soft speech? She had never granted me anything so near an admission of love until now.

"It is not an ordinary trial that I have borne for these meagre meetings where I do not see your face or touch your hand," I answered. "But that must end. Put your hand in mine, Desire, and come with me. Let us go out of this room where shadows make our thoughts sickly. You shall stay with my cousin. Or if you choose, we will go straight to New York or Boston.

I am asking you to be my wife. Let us have done with phantoms and spectres. I love you."

"No," she whispered. "You do not love me tonight. Tonight you distrust me. Why?"

"Is it distrusting you to ask you to marry me?"

"Not this way would you have asked that of me when I last came! But I will answer you more honestly than you do me. To go with you would be the greatest happiness the world could give. To think of it dazzles the heart. But it is not for me. Have you forgotten, Roger, that my life is not mine? That I am a prisoner who has crept out for a little while? The gates soon close, now, upon me."

"What gates?" I demanded.

"Sacrifice and expiation."

"Expiation of what?" I exclaimed, exasperated. "Desire, I have read the book of Desire Mich.e.l.l, downstairs."

I heard her gasp and shrink in the darkness. Silence bound us both. In the hush, it seemed to me that the house suddenly trembled as it had done the night before, a slight shock as from some distant explosion. In my intentness upon the woman opposite me the tremor pa.s.sed unheeded. She must answer me now, surely! Now----

She spoke with a breathless difficulty, s.p.a.cing her words apart:

"How did you--find--the book?"

"It told me--the Thing from out there," I admitted, sullenly defiant of her opinion.

She cried out sharply.

"You? You took Its gift? You did that fatal madness--and you are here?

Oh, you are lost, and the guilt mine! Yet I warned you that danger flowed from knowing me. You accepted the risk and the sorrow--yet you have thrown down all for a bribe of knowledge. Do you not know what it means to take a gift from the Dark Ones of the Borderland? To brave the Loathesome Eyes so long--and fall this way at last! Yet--there may be a hope--since you still live. But go. Not tomorrow, not at dawn, but go now. By all that man can dread for soul or body, go now."

"Not without you."

"Me? Oh, how can I make you understand! I shall never come here again.

Take with you my grat.i.tude for our hours together, my prayers for all the years to come. There is no blame to you because you could not trust a woman on whom falls the shadow of the awful Watcher that stalks behind me. I make no reproach--if only you will go. Do not linger. I do most solemnly warn you not to stay alone in this room one moment after I have gone."

"Desire!" I exclaimed. "Wait. Forgive me. I trust you. I did not mean what you believe. Do not leave me this way. Desire----"

I can say honestly that my next action was without intention. On my table lay, as usual, a small electric torch. Every member of our household was provided with one for use in emergencies likely to occur in a country house, the time of candles being past. Now, rising in agitation and repentance, my hand pressed by chance upon the flashlight's b.u.t.ton. A beam of light poured across the darkness.

What did I see, starting out of the black gloom? A spirit or a woman?

Were those a woman's draperies or part of the night fog that showed mere swirl upon swirl of pale gray twisting in the path of light? I glimpsed a face colorless as pearl, the shine of eyes dark and almond shaped, then a drifting ma.s.s of gray smoke, all intermingled with glittering gold flashes, seemed to close between us. The whole apparition sank down out of vision, as aghast, I lifted my hand and the torch went out.

Shaken out of all ability to speak, I stood in my place. Did I hear a movement, or only a stirring of the orchard trees beyond the windows?

"Desire?" I ventured, my voice hoa.r.s.e to my ears.

No answer. I felt myself alone.

I would not at once turn on the lamps. My haste might seem an attempt to break faith with her a second time. I sat down again, folding my arms upon the table and resting my forehead upon them.

Well, I had seen her at last--but how? A wan loveliness seemingly painted upon the canvas of the dark by a brush dipped in moonlight. A white moth caught fluttering in the ray of the torch. Seen at the instant of her leaving me forever; insulted by my suspicions, my love hurled coa.r.s.ely at her like a command, my promise of security for her visits apparently broken. How dared I even hope for her return?

Now I knew why my enemy had guided me to those books, that I might read, fill my mind with the poison of vile thoughts, and destroy the comradeship that bound me to Desire Mich.e.l.l. How should I find her? How free us both?

The clock in the hall downstairs struck a single bell. With dull surprise I realized that considerable time had pa.s.sed while I sat there.

Still I did not move, weighed down by a profound discouragement.

Suddenly, as a wave will run up a beach in advance of the incoming tide, impelled by some deep stir in the ocean's secret places, an icy surge rushed about my feet. Deathly cold from that current struck through my whole body. My heart shuddered and staggered in its beating from pure shock.

"_Go! Not tomorrow, not at dawn, but now!_"

The wave seeped back, receded away from me down its invisible beach.

Desire's warning hammered at my mind, striving to burst some barred door to reach the consciousness within that had loitered too long. This was the new peril. This was what I had fled from, unknowing the source of my panic, the night before.

This was death.

A second surge struck me with the heavy shock of a veritable wave from some bitter ocean. This time the tide rose to my knees; boiling and hissing in its rush. Blood and nerves seemed to freeze. I felt my heart stop, then reel on like a broken thing. Flecks of crimson spattered like foam against my eyelids.

The wave broke. The ma.s.s poured down the beach, tugging at me in its retreat. With the last strength ebbing away from me with that receding current, I dragged the chain of the lamp beside me.