Page:Weird Tales Volume 8 Number 3 (1926-09).djvu/128

Rh Ewan colored slightly.

“Your rebuke is a just one, sis,” he admitted. “Pardon me, doctor, for my interruption. Perhaps I was hasty.”

The doctor’s dark eyes grew brighter. He even smiled.

“You are very excusable, Gillespie. And please let me assure you that I am honest when I say that to me it was both startling and disconcerting to have Gretel let down the safe bars of impersonality and open the windows of her soul toward me. It meant that I had to be guarded in every word and action toward her, for fear of misinterpretation. And that later I would have to hurt her—for I could discover no warmer feelings toward her than admiration and friendship, search my heart as I might.

“Gretel had often spoken to me of her longing for a pet of some kind. I sent to Paris for a Persian kitten, and while her father was ill, and before she had permitted me to read her feelings so plainly, this little creature arrived and I had the pleasure of presenting it to her. The trouble I had taken to give her pleasure must have been the opening wedge in persuading her that I was more interested than I had felt wise to express. She must, in fact, have taken my gift as a delicate indication from me of a warmer feeling, for it was immediately after this that she began to treat me more as a favored lover than a friend on an intimate but impersonal footing.

“While the professor lay on his death-bed, Gretel permitted him to understand that she would not be left unprotected. I felt myself trapped. But I could not find it in my heart to deny the dying man this consolation, when with a smile of contentment on his haggard countenance he joined our hands and blessed us. In that moment Gretel lifted her face to mine for the first kiss—and I—I gave it. Such a revulsion of feeling toward her took place within me at the intimate contact that physical sickness gripped me; I felt nauseated, and was horrified that the kiss of a lovely and loving girl should affect me in such manner. Little did I dream then why my soul, clean and uncontaminated by wilful evil, shrank from that caress.

“Into my sick ears she murmured her love. ‘I would sell my very soul for your sake, Dale,’ she whispered. Significant words, which at the time I hardly heeded. It was later that I was to realize what unutterably hideous things lay behind them.

“Now came the thing which has given Gretel her hold on me, a hold more powerful to bind me than steel chains could be. The deceased professor lay in his casket, surrounded by flowers, on the morning of the funeral. I was working in the laboratory on certain experiments which could not be held up, when Gretel, with white face and staring blue eyes, burst into the room. The little Persian cat had gotten into the parlor, and Gretel—knowing well what might happen—had not dared to go in after it herself.

“‘You gave it to me. The responsibility is yours, Dale. I dare not,’ she said with trembling lips. Momentarily horrified though I was—for my occult studies had prepared me for such contingencies—my modern, common-sense mentality could not credit that possibility. I laughed. God help me, I laughed! Pushing her to one side gently, I went down into the parlor.

“The kitten was sunning itself at one window where the shade was up a trifle, letting in a broad beam of sunshine. Apart from that, the great apartment was in gloom, which seemed to center about the casket standing in the middle of the room, covered by flowers which shed a heavy perfume that was almost sickeningly sweet. I went toward the