Page:Beyond Fantasy Fiction Volume 2 Issue 4 (1955-02).djvu/10

 ANFRED took me down to London, where I was exhibited to vast, cheering throngs. Getting an exit visa presented no difficulty, but my entrance visa to the United States was harder. Somebody had written an anonymous letter to the State Department saying I was a subversive, and the prince had the damnedest time disproving it.

The ocean voyage was—to put it mildly—ghastly. It was ghastly for Manfred too, as never before in his long zoological career had it been necessary to take care of a seasick dragon. He was a pretty nice fellow; he came every day to my modest apartment in the hold to smooth mv fevered brow and whisper words of encouragement, but he wouldn’t kiss me. To tell the truth, I don't think it ever occurred to him.

I'd never before had any difficulty in getting a man to kiss me—quite the reverse, in fact—but I guess it's different when you’re five-foot-seven, blonde and curved in the right places, from when you're eighty-five feet long, green and who cares where your curves are?

They gave me a ticker-tape parade down Broadway and did everything to make me feel at home; hung garlands around my neck and served up magnificent nut steaks (Manfred still was under the delusion that I was herbivorous) and chocolate creams. But nobody kissed me.

They put my picture in the papers (wrong profile) and wrote reams of copy about me; I appeared on television and was a smash hit. But nobody kissed me.

I was installed in the largest, handsomest, fanciest cage at the zoo (though I would have preferred a more exclusive one farther away from the refreshment stand), complete with private swimming pool. But nobody kissed me

And then Manfred, my prince, left me, left me to go back to his wife—a middle-aged hausfrau whose bloodlines were absolutely anemic. Bourgeois, that’s what he was. Bourgeois!

“Well, good-by, Dipsy,” he said to me, not without regret, for he was, like all Mittel-European princes, a man of strong sentiment. “I'll drop by now and again to see how you're getting on.”

I clung to him, crying so hard I almost put out my fires. My last hope was going. If he didn’t kiss me, I would have to remain a dragon for the rest of my life and, since dragons are immortal unless killed by knights sans peur et sans reproche — a category which has been extinct for ages—that was a longish time.

“Look how fond she's grown of me,” Manfred said, and there were tears behind his thick lenses. 8