Page:Weird Tales Volume 9 Number 4 (1927-04).djvu/27

 ure shrinking away from him was slim like a young palm. As she sprang to her feet, her tightly plaited black hair tumbled down her back like a great glistening snake.

"I beg your pardon," he repeated, again and again, "I did not mean to intrude."

His soothing voice calmed her somewhat and she consented to listen to his explanations, huddled back into her rattan chair, pressing her zurna to her breast as if it were a weapon of defense. Her slim brown hands trembled and the instrument gave a plaintive sound as she nervously jerked at its strings.

"But how could you take my burka for a man? Why should a man hang out of the window?" she asked at last, still suspicious.

He gave no answer. How could he tell her the truth? His wild thoughts about a man being hurled out of the window by a witch seemed to him now utterly incredible. He could not bring himself to confess them.

She looked at him long and searchingly. Then a somber smile stirred her face. That smile made her look suddenly older. Only now he noticed a gray lock among the heavy black waves of her hair.

"So you, too, have heard about that?"

Still he stood silent, his head bent low, ashamed to look into her face. It was a sweetly sad face, kindly and trustful, now that she had accepted his explanation. How could anyone suspect such an innocent-looking, frightened little woman of premeditated murder?

"I would not be surprized if a Caucasian believed the silly story. But you, an American?"

"How do you know I am an American?"

"My aunt told me. Do sit down, now that you are here." She pushed toward him a little padded footstool.

"She would think me compromised if she saw you here. But I don't mind. It is ages since I saw a new face; the solitude here drives me mad! It's several years since"

She stopped abruptly, her beautiful eyes widened again as if she saw a ghost.

"She came to live with me since my father died. She doesn't care for the mountaineers' superstitions and is surprized at nothing. She seems to take everything for granted. This is because she is so very primitive. When I was young I thought it was because she is so very wise."

"But you are young!" he protested.

"I am twenty-six. An old age for a Georgian woman. I gave up marriage. None would marry a witch."

Again she smiled, bewitchingly.

"They think me a reincarnation of Princess Tamara. They say I can grow old and young at will." She laughed forcedly. "Ridiculous, isn't it? Unfortunately, my name is also Tamara."

She fell silent, her smooth forehead crossed by a frown.

"Now that they think the worst of me," she continued in a plaintive, musical voice, "I don't care what I do. I prance on horseback until late into the night, alone, in men's clothes. I saw you entering the castle after me."

"Riding up that steep slippery road! You might have killed yourself!"

As he said this he looked at her small hands, at the delicate oval of her face, into her eyes of a timid doe, and wondered how such a woman could "prance on horseback."

"You might have killed yourself," he repeated, and felt a painful contraction of the heart at the very thought of it. That strange woman, with her childlike face and wisp of gray hair over her left temple, was