Page:Weird Tales Volume 9 Number 6 (1927-06).djvu/12

 Clare could not have seen that first rapture of their love, after all.

nearly midnight when the sisters finally retired to the room they shared together. There had been a bottle of old port opened that the healths of the young pair might be toasted. And it seemed that the hours had only been minutes, to Margaret.

“Clare darling, I’ve kept you up awfully late tonight,” she apologized with compunction, turning a flushed, happy face to her sister. “You should * have been in bed ages ago.”

“This is a special night, Margie.”

“Wasn’t it magnificent?” Margar¬ et’s voice dropped into an almost sol¬ emn key as she stopped brushing out her wonderful auburn hair. “It seemed to — us — that there had never been such a night before.”

“I thought much the same.. But, Margie, did it seem to you—don’t tell me I’m imagining things, please— did it seem to you that there was something strange, something almost awful, about the beauty of the garden tonight? I was really afraid of it, and I have never felt that way be¬ fore. But tonight it actually seemed that there was a presence abroad, a presence that boded no good to some¬ one.”

Margaret, her smooth forehead wrinkled, whirled about suddenly to face her sister.

“That’s odd,” she commented bruskly. “Ned complained of the very same feeling. He declared that he felt jealous, envious eyes upon him.”

Clare tumbled over into bed and turned her face from her sister. She slipped something under her pillow as she did so—it was Ned’s handker¬ chief. In a smothered voice she said. “Margie! That" was not a heart at¬ tack I had this evening.”

“ Clare dear, you are dreaming. If it wasn’t a heart attack, what was it?”

“That is just what I would give worlds to know,” answered the other girl earnestly. “Margie, there was something strange in our garden to¬ night, something no one could see— but it was there, nevertheless. And —I know what it was! Oh, don’t turn out the light, Margie! I just can’t sleep in the dark tonight.”

Such unusual timidity on Clare’s part made Margaret look at her sister searchingly. Then she sat on the edge of the bed and began to smooth the brown hair gently.

“And what was it you saw in the garden?” she inquired, with a touch of light humor in her tone.

“I didn’t see. I just felt. But something took all my strength out of me suddenly. It was as if some¬ thing else had clothed itself with my body, only my body didn’t go with it into the garden; it stayed inside. But I knew — I know — all that that Other saw and did.”

‘ ‘ Dearest, you are overwrought and tired. This glorious night has thrown a spell over you and it has been too much for your tired little head.”

“Margie!” Clare drew herself up, to a sitting posture. “Do you re¬ member Clifford Bentley?” There was so much significance in her tone that the older girl gave her an amazed look as she replied affirma¬ tively.

“Margie, Clifford Bentley was in the garden tonight, spying on you and Ned.”

For a moment Margaret regarded her sister with a kind of terror ; then she broke into a soft laugh. “Oh, come now, Clare, that is too much to ask me to believe. Clifford Bentley has been dead many years, quite too dead, poor boy, to come wandering about our garden.”

“But he was there,” persisted Clare stubbornly. “I tell you, Mar¬ gie, I felt him there. Please don’t