Page:Weird Tales Volume 4 Number 4 (1924-12).djvu/61

60 tell him what I thought of him—I—I love him so!”

She stamped her feet. Then she broke down crying and flung herself on the bench beside me. She looked intensely young and childish, and it was hard to keep away from the idea that she wasn’t a woodland fairy, crushed and bruised, out there in the moonlight.

“Listen, little friend,” I said, "I have known the man you speak of much longer than you have. You have simply mistaken him. I’d stake my life on his honor toward women. If he let you love him he loved you. You can set that down.”

She stopped crying and straightened up, moving a little closer toward me.

“I am here tonight at his request, as conveyed in the last letter he wrote me”,,” [sic] I went on. “I have that letter with me. What is your name?” I asked abruptly.

“Agnes Lindell," she whispered.

“That’s the name,” I told her, “and you can see it in a few moments yourself. Now listen here,” and I held the flashlight to the paper: “‘In our hospital is a young lady named Agnes Lindell, one of the sweetest and most faithful girls I have ever seen. I can imagine your ironical smile at this, coming from a hard-boiled woman-hater like myself. To no other person would I make the statement, and you know me too well to attribute it to boastfulness, but this dear little girl is so grateful to me for a fancied service that she thinks I’m the greatest fellow in the world. If I wasn’t sure her feeling is founded altogether on gratitude, I’d ask her to marry me, despite my being many years older, but I can’t get away from the conviction that it would be wrong to take advantage of my influence over her. I love her too much for that. God knows I want to do what’s right, and should anything ever happen to me, Jim, and you could find her, I wish you’d tell her that with my last breath my thoughts were of her.”

The girl reached gently over and took the letter from my hand.

“It’s mine by rights,” she murmured.

I nodded. “It’s yours.”

She fixed it in her bosom some way, taking extraordinary pains, it seemed to me, to secure it with pins. Then she smiled and impulsively held out her hand.

“I’m so glad I met you,” she said in a deep, melodious voice which seemed to be hers by birthright.

Her face was serene and happy.

“It was rather lucky,” I remarked, “but it’s getting chilly out here—hadn’t we better be going back?”

We were standing. close together, she hanging to my arm as we strolled slowly along.

“Do you. believe the people up there understand the truth of all these things that worry us so down here?” she asked, looking eagerly into my eyes.

“Most assuredly,” I replied, “There is no doubting up there, no grief, no sorrow at separation."

E WERE following the path close to the edge of the bluff. An icy chill, like the breath of death, came up from the dark waters below. Suddenly to the northeast a long, slender, pink. streak of light appeared over the trees on the far side of the river.

“Look!” she cried, letting go of my arm. “The dawn is breaking It’s all light over there   he's calling   calling to me I see him  Doctor!—Robert! I’m coming!”

And before I could reach her she ran to the edge of the high bluff and leaped off like a bird!