Page:Weird Tales volume 36 number 02.djvu/33

 can't wait for you till then—I've got to have you!"

She thrust him away, roughly this time. "You will have me only as your wife. I have told you that before."

His hands fell helplessly to his sides. Petulantly, resentfully, he complained, "If you really mean that, why don't you stop making a fool of me? Why do you meet me here by the lake each night, playing with me as a cat does with a mouse?"

She looked at him silently for a moment; then quietly, "Because I hope you will not always be a mouse. If you are as mad about me as you say, you will not let a woman you hate stand between us much longer.'

"What can I do? Divorce is out of the question."

"Of course—then her money would be taken from you."

He was annoyed. "I'm not thinking only of money!"

She leaned close to him, "I'm not thinking only of divorce."

He stared at her for a long moment, and her cold, unwavering eyes returned his gaze. His eyes fell and she began to talk rapidly in her low, compelling voice.

HE pathetic little cough rasped out again. At the sound, the man in the stern dipped his paddle more deeply into the faint shimmer of the scum-covered water.

After a struggling, breathless moment, the coughing spell abated and its victim spoke:

"It's wonderful to be on the lake with you again, Roger—it's been so long since we've been in the canoe together." She laughed happily. "I feel as though we were beginning a second honeymoon."

Roger Benton glanced briefly at his frail wife, grunted, and returned his attention to the paddle. In the silence that followed the throbbing hum of the Indian chant slid steadily over the water—a brooding monotone of endless cadence.

Finally Bernice spoke again.

"How solemn the chant sounds tonight: Like the hymn it really is—a prayer for the dying."

"For the—dying?" His voice held a sharp, uncertain quality.

"Yes. This is Indian Summer, you know—the Moon of Falling Leaves, of dying things. That song is a tribute to fading nature. Rather beautiful, don't you think?"

The paddle trailed unheeded, as he repeated abstractedly: "The Moon of Falling Leaves—of dying things."

She leaned forward a little, her dark eyes searching his face anxiously. "Roger—you act so strangely tonight. Aren't you well, dear?"

He straightened, recovered himself. "I'm quite all right." He resumed his jerky, erratic stroke, as she reached to place a small hand tenderly on his knee.

"I know how unhappy you are here. But I'll be well again soon, and we'll go back to the city." She laughed self-consciously, "I would like to return here for just one day each year, though—to renew my offering to the Spirits of the Lake. I've taken their protection very seriously, you see."

The muscles of his jaw working spasmodically under the tanned skin, and he opened his mouth as though to speak.

Quickly, placatingly, she forestalled him.

"Please don't be annoyed, dear, it's such a pretty legend."

He turned his head abruptly away; as though in anger or to avoid her eyes. His strokes grew faster, clumsier; stabbing angry slashes that sent the frail craft forward in plunging leaps. The woman, a little fearfully, looked behind her to see where this mad race was heading. Then she spoke again, with patently assumed unconcern:

"Roger, sharp rocks are just