Page:Weird Tales Volume 36 Number 08 (1942-11).djvu/77

Rh throat of the dead. Then the woman ran to the window and climbed feverishly down the ivy. This time she did not wait to put on her slippers.

Once she reached the ground she ran to the rock. The laughing man was gone; the goats and the geese were gone; but through the woods, down the road, she heard the tones of the music, a very old tune, all within an octave, and she hastened after the song, crying:

"Oh, Pan! Wait for me! Please wait for me so I can love you and be happy.”

But the laughing man walked on. The running, panting woman could come no closer to him till at last she saw him standing on the edge of the cliff. There he stood and played, waiting for her. She reached out to catch him and kiss him, but failing to touch the fantasy of his body, she plunged over the cliff, her white body curving like a falling star, till she silently became one with the crushed automobile.

The laughing man, lurking in the shadows, ran out into the moonlight and threw his open hands into the air as though to pluck the moonbeams with his questing fingers. Then he began to play his pipes anew. From the dark woods came the goats and the geese and gathered silently round him, and the song he played was all in one octave and very old. He laughed, and laughed.

"These mortals are never content. They always try to gather moonbeams—and even I cannot do that.”

ILENT and blind, around the sun, Its cold, unconscious course is spun, Passive, by cosmic forces hurled —This dead thing that was once a world.

The grass was green upon its face. The flowers bloomed in every place. With song and labor it was gay In every field, on every way.

One day it yielded up its pride. Its hope and aspiration died. Then life, and love of life were gone. Now its pale corpse spins on and on.