Page:Weird Tales Volume 9 Number 6 (1927-06).djvu/8





“No—no—no!” she screamed, and sank back unconscious into the arms of her father.

“HECK!” Father Rooney chuckled deep in his throat, and lifted his hand from the knight that had just made an unexpected foray among his opponent’s pieces.

The old doctor leaned over the board to study the situation carefully. “Tt does look as though you had me,” he admitted unwillingly. “Well, next time you may not have such good luck.”

“Luck?” queried the priest softly, a whimsical smile curving his lips.

“Poor papa! You are always beating him, Father,” reproached a soft voice from the other end of the room.

The floor lamp illuminated a narrow circle about the chess players and but dimly disclosed a little figure that pressed against the curtain at the open window as though to escape observation from without as well as from within. Against the wall behind her the polished surface of a pair of crutches caught the light in long lines. It was characteristic of Clare that she should put unpleasant things behind her.

The face she turned occasionally toward the chess players disclosed singular beauty, even in the softly diffused light of the big lamp. One saw dark, sensitive eyes and felt the tenderness of the habitual gentle smile that made her expression so attractive. Her low forehead was shaded by light brown hair that fell over her small ears and was knotted loosely at the nape of a slender neck. But Clare’s real beauty lay in the spirituality that beamed from her eyes.

There was a brilliant moon. Clare, gazing out into the garden, thought she had never seen it as strange as it seemed that night. It was a mysterious dreamland, not the garden she knew. It was full of unexpected patches of light that changed shape imperceptibly as the moon swam 726