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+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76112 ***
+
+
+
+
+
+                          Vallisneria Madness
+
+                         By RALPH MILNE FARLEY
+
+              _A strange and curious little story, about
+                   the moonlight mating of flowers_
+
+           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
+                         Weird Tales May 1937.
+         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
+         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
+
+
+Seated comfortably on the broad terrace of Professor Gordon’s palatial
+mansion, Tom Spencer stared abstractedly at the red disk of the setting
+sun, reflected in the turgid waters of the pool in the garden beyond the
+edge of the terrace as he listened to his host recount the fascinating
+story of the love-life of the vallisneria.
+
+The cameo-face of the white-haired botany professor bore a whimsical
+expression as he declaimed, “Beneath the black surface of that muddy
+pool out there, the flowers of a score or so of this rare plant which I
+brought from tropical Asia, pass their entire humdrum life, except for
+one brief night of moonlit love—not unlike our human existence.”
+
+Tom Spencer shifted his keen gray eyes to stare at the matted,
+ribbon-like leaves, floating on top of the water, which gave little
+indication of floral life below.
+
+The old professor continued, “As you know from my lectures at Columbia,
+the vallisneria is a diœcious plant. On one night of each year, the
+night of the vernal full moon, the stem of each female flower begins to
+stretch, until its ghostly green and white bloom rises to the surface.
+Each male flower too feels that same impelling urge, ‘an instinct within
+it that reaches and towers,’ as James Russell Lowell says. Listen to how
+Maeterlinck, that great poet and scientist, describes their fatal
+wooing.”
+
+He opened a book which lay on his lap, tilted it so that its pages were
+illumined by the fading sunlight, and read aloud:
+
+    “The green-coated male flowers rise in turn, full of hope,
+    toward the flowers which already sway above them in the
+    moonlight, awaiting them and summoning them to the magic world
+    which lies beyond their native obscurity. But, when half their
+    upward journey is done, they reach the limit that their too
+    short stems can stretch, and are checked abruptly, before they
+    can win their way to their indifferent sweethearts, who
+    pridefully refuse to bend to caress them.
+
+    “Filled with yearning, the little heart of each male flower
+    swells and swells until it breaks. In a magnificent effort to
+    achieve his bliss, he tears himself from his stem, and in one
+    incomparable flight rises to perish in love on the surface of
+    the pool. Dying, but free and radiant, he floats for one brief
+    ecstatic moment beside his beloved, then shrivels and floats
+    away; while his mate closes the petals in which she has
+    imprisoned his last breath of life, and shrinks back into the
+    depths, there to ripen the fruit of that fatal union.”
+
+The sun set, as Professor Gordon closed his copy of Maeterlinck. A
+twilight mist began to form above the surface of the garden pool. “How
+much more noble are the flowers than we,” he mused. “As Shakespeare
+says, ‘Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but
+not for love.’”
+
+His athletic young guest narrowed his gray eyes and stared inwardly at
+the vision conjured up by the older man’s reading. “I wonder,” he
+breathed.
+
+Professor Gordon broke the spell by saying in a matter-of-fact tone,
+“Well, my boy, you are to see tonight the mating of vallisneria, a sight
+which my colleagues would give their eye-teeth to witness.”
+
+“I feel flattered——” Spencer began diffidently, shifting his broad
+shoulders in an embarrassed manner.
+
+But the fine-featured old man silenced him with a deprecatory, “Don’t,
+then! You are more outstanding as a football player than as a student of
+botany. I invited you for other reasons than any outstanding ability you
+may have shown in your four years of studies under me.”
+
+(Spencer thought, “Most likely to rub in on his colleagues his
+non-invitation of them, by asking instead a mere athlete, who is taking
+botany merely because it’s a cinch course.”)
+
+Meanwhile the professor was continuing, “I am sorry that I can’t stay
+out here with you. The mists affect my throat. And I’m sorry my daughter
+Natalie isn’t here either. She helps me take care of the plants, and
+you’d find her quite intelligent about them. But she had to go over to
+her aunt’s.”
+
+“I shouldn’t think she’d care to miss——”
+
+“Oh, it’s an old story with Natalie. She’s seen the phenomenon before.
+And now I must caution you about one thing. Don’t go any nearer the pool
+than the edge of the terrace. The flowers, when in bloom, exude a strong
+narcotic fragrance, which is rather dangerous. Anyhow, you can see quite
+clearly from here.”
+
+He rose, and held out one slender blue-veined hand.
+
+“Good night, sir,” said Spencer, taking the frail hand in his big strong
+one. “And thank you for inviting me.”
+
+                 *        *        *        *        *
+
+Tom Spencer eased his athletic frame down into one of the terrace
+chairs, and gazed abstractedly at the purpling pink of the western sky.
+
+“Just as well that that brat of his isn’t here tonight,” he mused. “What
+on earth could I do to amuse her?” He remembered having seen Natalie
+Gordon several times during his Freshman year, hanging around the door
+of the Botany Building at Morningside Heights, waiting for her father. A
+gawky, pug-nosed, freckle-faced, little thing, with two tightly braided
+pigtails—about fourteen or fifteen years old, so he judged. Just as
+well the brat wasn’t here.
+
+Spencer turned his attention back to the garden pool. But pitch-darkness
+had now fallen, and he could see nothing except the outline of the
+shrubs against the deep purple of the western sky. Then trees in the
+distance became dimly lit by the full moon, which was rising behind the
+house; but the long shadow of the house still obscured the garden and
+its pool. A vagrant zephyr wafted a damp, muddy scent of mist up from
+the hidden pool.
+
+“I wonder if those water-plants have any consciousness, any volition,
+about their tragic mating,” mused Spencer, “or is it all merely
+automatic, mechanistic?”
+
+He leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, and visualized the passage
+from Maeterlinck, which the old botany professor had read to him.
+
+                 *        *        *        *        *
+
+He opened his eyes again with a start, and sat erect. The shadow of the
+house had receded to the edge of the terrace, and the entire garden,
+with the pool in its midst, was now bathed in the chalky light of the
+moon almost overhead.
+
+Above the surface of the water hung a cottony swirling mist, which
+seemed to portend some sort of boiling activity in the depths of the
+muddy pool. The mist thickened and spilled out onto the surrounding
+garden.
+
+“Humph!” sniffed Spencer, getting up out of his chair. “Can’t see a
+thing from here.” And, forgetful of Professor Gordon’s express
+injunction, he ambled down off the terrace, and along the garden walk to
+the edge of the pool.
+
+Through gaps in the swirling mist, he could see the matted ribbon-like
+vegetation floating inertly in the water. Not a sign of a flower. So he
+swung back to the terrace, and slumped down again in his chair.
+
+The mist continued to thicken.
+
+“I guess there’ll be no show tonight,” Spencer grumbled disgustedly.
+Then suddenly he sat erect, thrust his broad shoulders forward, and
+peered intently through the gathering fog, where dark shapes—human-like
+shapes—seemed to be moving.
+
+Brushing the mist away, shedding it, rising above it, and yet still
+seeming to be a part of it, they stood out at last, clear in the
+moonlight; majestic women, Valkyries, with proudly-held blond heads, and
+flashing eyes. Filmy, floating, luna-green robes set off the chalky
+whiteness of their perfect features.
+
+A heady perfume wafted across from the hidden pool.
+
+The mist receded until it concealed merely the feet of the beautiful
+creatures. Where they stood, whether on the surface of the pool or on
+its banks, Spencer could not tell. Swaying slightly, as though rooted,
+they undulated their green-swathed arms like seaweed in the tide. Their
+heads thrown back with an almost defiant gesture, they bathed their
+perfect features in the glaring white light of the zenith moon.
+
+Never had Tom Spencer seen such sheer feminine beauty. He had no
+recollection of leaving his seat, but now he found himself standing at
+the edge of the terrace, irresistibly drawn by a strange yearning toward
+that galaxy of pulchritude. There were some twenty or so of the young
+women, their faces all different, each a face of character and
+personality, each more beautiful than the last.
+
+Irresolute, Spencer held out his arms toward the entire group.
+Which—which one drew him? To which one should he drift? The uncertainty
+held him back—that, and the subconscious memory of some warning, some
+prohibition—and some third as yet undefined prompting.
+
+And, while he hesitated, there appeared, poking up through the mist at
+the feet of the strange regal women, the points of a score of
+green-peaked hats. Up they came, and faces appeared beneath them, dark,
+cleanly-cut, handsome faces of men; tense, yearning faces, with
+flashing, fanatic eyes, each pair of eyes fixed on one of the beautiful
+women who towered above.
+
+Gradually they rose, until each man, clad in dark Lincoln green, stood
+beside one of the pale, diaphanous women.
+
+And then a strange, inexplicable paradox! The beautiful women were
+slender, completely feminine, utterly adorable. The men were well-built,
+athletic, thoroughly masculine, seemingly tall rather than short. And
+yet the women towered above them.
+
+Tom Spencer’s mind flashed incongruously back to the scrapbooks of his
+childhood days, in which he had frequently pasted figures from pictures
+taken in different scales, with the result that each figure, properly
+proportioned by itself, failed to match the others in size.
+
+Each of the men now clasped his arms around the waist of his beloved,
+and stretched and stretched, every sinew of his athletic body taut with
+the effort. Although Spencer could not see their feet for the mist which
+covered them, he knew that they were standing on tiptoe. An inarticulate
+sigh went up from all of them. “Kiss me! Kiss me!” it pleaded. “Kiss me,
+though I die!”
+
+But the stately women stiffened, and held themselves more aloof, and
+towered even more inaccessibly, with a beauty so flaming that it hurt.
+Then their sea-swaying arms floated down until their slim white hands
+rested on the shoulders of the men. The pearly faces of the women
+inclined slightly—not enough to meet the upward-straining lips of their
+mates, but just enough so that they could gaze coldly but enticingly
+down. A silvery ripple of sound floated through the moonlight. The women
+were speaking, but what they were saying Spencer could not tell.
+
+A strangled flush spread over the faces of the men, as, lifted by the
+hands of the women, they rose slowly, until white now with a livid
+whiteness, their lips met in one passionate, soul-searing embrace.
+
+Tom Spencer drew in a deep breath, and his fingers clenched, then sprang
+open with a sudden gesture of horror, as he realized that those male
+heads, so tightly clinging lip to lip with the beautiful mist-women,
+were bodiless! The green-clad bodies, which had strained so tautly to
+thrust their heads up to that kiss of death, were now slowly slumping,
+settling downward, shriveling, turning brown, drifting away in the
+swirling mists which bathed the feet of the majestic women.
+
+The heads themselves had lost their realness. The skin had become
+wrinkled, leathery, deflated, flabby. The features were scarcely
+distinguishable.
+
+Then one by one, with a contemptuous gesture of satiation, the women
+flung away the sucked-dry rinds. And Tom Spencer, his gaze intent upon
+the expressions on the women’s faces, took no heed what became of the
+cast-off rinds.
+
+For a subtle change was taking place in those beautiful but cruel
+creatures. A certain matronly smugness coarsened their features, and
+they seemed less tall. Yes, they were visibly shrinking, shrinking and
+becoming squat and ugly, shrinking back into the mists which masked the
+muddy pool. All, all returning to the slime which had spawned them.
+
+All but one! Alone she stood, unmated, still towering slim and beautiful
+in the moonlight. And then Tom Spencer knew why he had waited, why he
+had not gone to any of the others. For, transcendently beautiful though
+they had all been, yet this sole survivor of that glorious company
+outshone them all.
+
+Erect she stood, her golden head thrown back, her arms stretched to each
+side and raised a little, so that the filmy pale green gauze of her gown
+hung from them like the wings of a luna moth.
+
+                 *        *        *        *        *
+
+Spencer gasped and rose from his chair. Forgotten were the warnings of
+Professor Gordon, as the young man moved steadily out off the terrace
+into the misty moonlight.
+
+Her lips parted, a smile of welcome overspread her cameo face, and then
+she spoke—a tinkly, silver, moonlit, rippling voice. “Have you been
+waiting long for me?”
+
+“All my life!” breathed Spencer.
+
+She laughed, a friendly, silvery laugh.
+
+Like a sleep-walker, Spencer continued to plod toward her.
+
+Six-feet one he was, a gridiron star, and yet this frail, slim wisp of a
+feminine creature towered inaccessibly above him in the mists of the
+pool.
+
+Spencer reached her. He clasped his arms around her waist, and stretched
+and stretched, every sinew of his athletic body taut with the effort. He
+raised his heels from the ground, and strained on tiptoe. A sigh
+breathed upward from his lips.
+
+“Kiss me! Kiss me!” he pleaded. “Kiss me, though I die.”
+
+But she stiffened, and held herself more aloof, and towered even more
+inaccessibly, while her beauty flamed out so intensely that it gripped
+Spencer’s heart with a stabbing pain.
+
+Then her wide-spread arms floated down, until her slim, cool, white
+hands rested on Spencer’s shoulders. Her cameo-cut face inclined
+slightly, not enough to meet the upward-straining lips of the young man,
+but merely enough so that she could gaze coldly but enticingly down into
+his eyes.
+
+Like a drowning man, there swept through his mind the vision of heads
+wrenched from male shoulders, sucked dry, and cast aside; male bodies
+shriveling and drifting away. Well, it was worth it, for that one moment
+of transcendent ecstasy. But, at the memory-picture of the
+transformation wrought in the beautiful mist-woman by that long,
+passionate embrace, he shuddered momentarily. However, he would be gone
+then—he would not be there to see it. Once more he strained to reach
+his beloved.
+
+But the expected strangling wrench on his neck did not come. Instead the
+stiff aloofness of the beautiful girl softened. An expression of
+yielding consecration suffused her lovely face. She leaned, she bent
+over him, and floated down into his arms.
+
+Their lips met and clung.
+
+                 *        *        *        *        *
+
+A breeze whipped her moon-green gown about him. Opening his eyes, he saw
+the mists blown away from the stone bench on which she had been
+standing, by the edge of the garden pool.
+
+Now, nestled in his arms, she no longer seemed terrifyingly dominating
+and aloof, but instead small and sweet and soft. And she did not coarsen
+and sink back into the slime of the pool.
+
+Side by side they sat down together on the stone bench, his arm about
+her slender waist, her golden head against his shoulder.
+
+For a long time they sat thus in silence. Then, “Tom,” she breathed.
+
+“You know my name?” he asked in surprise.
+
+“Why not?” she laughed a silvery moonlit laugh.
+
+Again they sat in silence.
+
+At last she pushed softly away from him. “Well, dear,” she said, “it is
+very late, and we really ought to be going in.”
+
+“In? Into the pool?”
+
+“No, silly! Into the house.”
+
+He turned, and seized her by the shoulders, and stared fixedly down at
+her in the moonlight. Then, with a sigh of gladness, he clasped her to
+him.
+
+“You’re Natalie Gordon!” he breathed. “You’re real! And I like you much
+better that way.”
+
+“I don’t know what on earth you’re talking about,” said she, “but it’s
+all right with me.”
+
+She held up her face, and once more his lips closed on hers, this time
+in a wholly human embrace.
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76112 ***
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+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76112 ***</div>
+
+
+<div class='lgc' style=''> <!-- rend=';' -->
+<p class='line' style='font-size:3em;'>Vallisneria Madness</p>
+<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
+<p class='line'>By</p>
+<p class='line'><span style='font-size:x-large'>RALPH MILNE FARLEY</span></p>
+<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
+<div class='summary'>
+<p class='pindent'><span class='it'>A strange and curious little story, about the moonlight mating of flowers</span></p>
+</div>
+<p class='line'>&#160;</p>
+<p class='line'>[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from<br />
+Weird Tales May 1937.<br />
+Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that<br />
+the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]</p>
+</div> <!-- end rend -->
+
+
+<p class='pindent'>Seated comfortably on the broad
+terrace of Professor Gordon’s palatial
+mansion, Tom Spencer stared
+abstractedly at the red disk of the setting
+sun, reflected in the turgid waters of the
+pool in the garden beyond the edge of
+the terrace as he listened to his host recount
+the fascinating story of the love-life
+of the vallisneria.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The cameo-face of the white-haired
+botany professor bore a whimsical expression
+as he declaimed, “Beneath the black
+surface of that muddy pool out there, the
+flowers of a score or so of this rare plant
+which I brought from tropical Asia, pass
+their entire humdrum life, except for one
+brief night of moonlit love—not unlike
+our human existence.”</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Tom Spencer shifted his keen gray
+eyes to stare at the matted, ribbon-like
+leaves, floating on top of the water, which
+gave little indication of floral life below.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The old professor continued, “As you
+know from my lectures at Columbia, the
+vallisneria is a diœcious plant. On one
+night of each year, the night of the vernal
+full moon, the stem of each female
+flower begins to stretch, until its ghostly
+green and white bloom rises to the surface.
+Each male flower too feels that
+same impelling urge, ‘an instinct within
+it that reaches and towers,’ as James Russell
+Lowell says. Listen to how Maeterlinck,
+that great poet and scientist, describes
+their fatal wooing.”</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>He opened a book which lay on his
+lap, tilted it so that its pages were illumined
+by the fading sunlight, and read
+aloud:</p>
+
+<div class='blockquote'>
+
+<p class='pindent'>“The green-coated male flowers rise in turn,
+full of hope, toward the flowers which already
+sway above them in the moonlight, awaiting them
+and summoning them to the magic world which
+lies beyond their native obscurity. But, when half
+their upward journey is done, they reach the limit
+that their too short stems can stretch, and are
+checked abruptly, before they can win their way
+to their indifferent sweethearts, who pridefully refuse
+to bend to caress them.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>“Filled with yearning, the little heart of each
+male flower swells and swells until it breaks. In
+a magnificent effort to achieve his bliss, he tears
+himself from his stem, and in one incomparable
+flight rises to perish in love on the surface of the
+pool. Dying, but free and radiant, he floats for
+one brief ecstatic moment beside his beloved, then
+shrivels and floats away; while his mate closes the
+petals in which she has imprisoned his last breath
+of life, and shrinks back into the depths, there to
+ripen the fruit of that fatal union.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The sun set, as Professor Gordon
+closed his copy of Maeterlinck. A twilight
+mist began to form above the surface
+of the garden pool. “How much
+more noble are the flowers than we,” he
+mused. “As Shakespeare says, ‘Men have
+died from time to time, and worms have
+eaten them, but not for love.’ ”</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>His athletic young guest narrowed his
+gray eyes and stared inwardly at the
+vision conjured up by the older man’s
+reading. “I wonder,” he breathed.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Professor Gordon broke the spell by
+saying in a matter-of-fact tone, “Well,
+my boy, you are to see tonight the mating
+of vallisneria, a sight which my colleagues
+would give their eye-teeth to
+witness.”</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>“I feel flattered——” Spencer began
+diffidently, shifting his broad shoulders
+in an embarrassed manner.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>But the fine-featured old man silenced
+him with a deprecatory, “Don’t, then!
+You are more outstanding as a football
+player than as a student of botany. I invited
+you for other reasons than any outstanding
+ability you may have shown in
+your four years of studies under me.”</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>(Spencer thought, “Most likely to rub
+in on his colleagues his non-invitation of
+them, by asking instead a mere athlete,
+who is taking botany merely because it’s
+a cinch course.”)</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Meanwhile the professor was continuing,
+“I am sorry that I can’t stay out here
+with you. The mists affect my throat.
+And I’m sorry my daughter Natalie isn’t
+here either. She helps me take care of the
+plants, and you’d find her quite intelligent
+about them. But she had to go
+over to her aunt’s.”</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>“I shouldn’t think she’d care to
+miss——”</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>“Oh, it’s an old story with Natalie.
+She’s seen the phenomenon before. And
+now I must caution you about one thing.
+Don’t go any nearer the pool than the
+edge of the terrace. The flowers, when in
+bloom, exude a strong narcotic fragrance,
+which is rather dangerous. Anyhow, you
+can see quite clearly from here.”</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>He rose, and held out one slender
+blue-veined hand.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>“Good night, sir,” said Spencer, taking
+the frail hand in his big strong one.
+“And thank you for inviting me.”</p>
+
+<hr class='tbk'/>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Tom Spencer eased his athletic frame
+down into one of the terrace chairs,
+and gazed abstractedly at the purpling
+pink of the western sky.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>“Just as well that that brat of his isn’t
+here tonight,” he mused. “What on earth
+could I do to amuse her?” He remembered
+having seen Natalie Gordon several
+times during his Freshman year, hanging
+around the door of the Botany Building
+at Morningside Heights, waiting for her
+father. A gawky, pug-nosed, freckle-faced,
+little thing, with two tightly braided
+pigtails—about fourteen or fifteen
+years old, so he judged. Just as well the
+brat wasn’t here.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Spencer turned his attention back to
+the garden pool. But pitch-darkness had
+now fallen, and he could see nothing except
+the outline of the shrubs against the
+deep purple of the western sky. Then
+trees in the distance became dimly lit by
+the full moon, which was rising behind
+the house; but the long shadow of the
+house still obscured the garden and its
+pool. A vagrant zephyr wafted a damp,
+muddy scent of mist up from the hidden
+pool.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>“I wonder if those water-plants have
+any consciousness, any volition, about
+their tragic mating,” mused Spencer, “or
+is it all merely automatic, mechanistic?”</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>He leaned back in his chair, closed his
+eyes, and visualized the passage from
+Maeterlinck, which the old botany professor
+had read to him.</p>
+
+<hr class='tbk'/>
+
+<p class='pindent'>He opened his eyes again with a
+start, and sat erect. The shadow of
+the house had receded to the edge of the
+terrace, and the entire garden, with the
+pool in its midst, was now bathed in the
+chalky light of the moon almost overhead.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Above the surface of the water hung
+a cottony swirling mist, which seemed to
+portend some sort of boiling activity in
+the depths of the muddy pool. The mist
+thickened and spilled out onto the surrounding
+garden.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>“Humph!” sniffed Spencer, getting up
+out of his chair. “Can’t see a thing from
+here.” And, forgetful of Professor Gordon’s
+express injunction, he ambled down
+off the terrace, and along the garden walk
+to the edge of the pool.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Through gaps in the swirling mist, he
+could see the matted ribbon-like vegetation
+floating inertly in the water. Not a
+sign of a flower. So he swung back to the
+terrace, and slumped down again in his
+chair.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The mist continued to thicken.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>“I guess there’ll be no show tonight,”
+Spencer grumbled disgustedly. Then suddenly
+he sat erect, thrust his broad shoulders
+forward, and peered intently through
+the gathering fog, where dark shapes—human-like
+shapes—seemed to be moving.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Brushing the mist away, shedding it,
+rising above it, and yet still seeming to be
+a part of it, they stood out at last, clear
+in the moonlight; majestic women,
+Valkyries, with proudly-held blond heads,
+and flashing eyes. Filmy, floating, luna-green
+robes set off the chalky whiteness
+of their perfect features.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>A heady perfume wafted across from
+the hidden pool.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The mist receded until it concealed
+merely the feet of the beautiful creatures.
+Where they stood, whether on the surface
+of the pool or on its banks, Spencer
+could not tell. Swaying slightly, as though
+rooted, they undulated their green-swathed
+arms like seaweed in the tide.
+Their heads thrown back with an almost
+defiant gesture, they bathed their perfect
+features in the glaring white light of the
+zenith moon.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Never had Tom Spencer seen such
+sheer feminine beauty. He had no recollection
+of leaving his seat, but now he
+found himself standing at the edge of the
+terrace, irresistibly drawn by a strange
+yearning toward that galaxy of pulchritude.
+There were some twenty or so of
+the young women, their faces all different,
+each a face of character and personality,
+each more beautiful than the last.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Irresolute, Spencer held out his arms
+toward the entire group. Which—which
+one drew him? To which one should he
+drift? The uncertainty held him back—that,
+and the subconscious memory of
+some warning, some prohibition—and
+some third as yet undefined prompting.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>And, while he hesitated, there appeared,
+poking up through the mist at the
+feet of the strange regal women, the
+points of a score of green-peaked hats.
+Up they came, and faces appeared beneath
+them, dark, cleanly-cut, handsome
+faces of men; tense, yearning faces, with
+flashing, fanatic eyes, each pair of eyes
+fixed on one of the beautiful women who
+towered above.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Gradually they rose, until each man,
+clad in dark Lincoln green, stood beside
+one of the pale, diaphanous women.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>And then a strange, inexplicable paradox!
+The beautiful women were slender,
+completely feminine, utterly adorable.
+The men were well-built, athletic, thoroughly
+masculine, seemingly tall rather
+than short. And yet the women towered
+above them.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Tom Spencer’s mind flashed incongruously
+back to the scrapbooks of his childhood
+days, in which he had frequently
+pasted figures from pictures taken in different
+scales, with the result that each
+figure, properly proportioned by itself,
+failed to match the others in size.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Each of the men now clasped his arms
+around the waist of his beloved, and
+stretched and stretched, every sinew of
+his athletic body taut with the effort. Although
+Spencer could not see their feet
+for the mist which covered them, he
+knew that they were standing on tiptoe.
+An inarticulate sigh went up from all of
+them. “Kiss me! Kiss me!” it pleaded.
+“Kiss me, though I die!”</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>But the stately women stiffened, and
+held themselves more aloof, and towered
+even more inaccessibly, with a beauty so
+flaming that it hurt. Then their sea-swaying
+arms floated down until their slim
+white hands rested on the shoulders of
+the men. The pearly faces of the women
+inclined slightly—not enough to meet the
+upward-straining lips of their mates, but
+just enough so that they could gaze coldly
+but enticingly down. A silvery ripple of
+sound floated through the moonlight. The
+women were speaking, but what they
+were saying Spencer could not tell.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>A strangled flush spread over the faces
+of the men, as, lifted by the hands of the
+women, they rose slowly, until white now
+with a livid whiteness, their lips met in
+one passionate, soul-searing embrace.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Tom Spencer drew in a deep breath,
+and his fingers clenched, then sprang
+open with a sudden gesture of horror, as
+he realized that those male heads, so
+tightly clinging lip to lip with the beautiful
+mist-women, were bodiless! The
+green-clad bodies, which had strained so
+tautly to thrust their heads up to that kiss
+of death, were now slowly slumping, settling
+downward, shriveling, turning
+brown, drifting away in the swirling
+mists which bathed the feet of the majestic
+women.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>The heads themselves had lost their
+realness. The skin had become wrinkled,
+leathery, deflated, flabby. The features
+were scarcely distinguishable.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Then one by one, with a contemptuous
+gesture of satiation, the women flung
+away the sucked-dry rinds. And Tom
+Spencer, his gaze intent upon the expressions
+on the women’s faces, took no heed
+what became of the cast-off rinds.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>For a subtle change was taking place in
+those beautiful but cruel creatures. A certain
+matronly smugness coarsened their
+features, and they seemed less tall. Yes,
+they were visibly shrinking, shrinking
+and becoming squat and ugly, shrinking
+back into the mists which masked the
+muddy pool. All, all returning to the
+slime which had spawned them.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>All but one! Alone she stood, unmated,
+still towering slim and beautiful
+in the moonlight. And then Tom Spencer
+knew why he had waited, why he had not
+gone to any of the others. For, transcendently
+beautiful though they had all
+been, yet this sole survivor of that glorious
+company outshone them all.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Erect she stood, her golden head
+thrown back, her arms stretched to each
+side and raised a little, so that the filmy
+pale green gauze of her gown hung from
+them like the wings of a luna moth.</p>
+
+<hr class='tbk'/>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Spencer gasped and rose from his
+chair. Forgotten were the warnings
+of Professor Gordon, as the young man
+moved steadily out off the terrace into
+the misty moonlight.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Her lips parted, a smile of welcome
+overspread her cameo face, and then she
+spoke—a tinkly, silver, moonlit, rippling
+voice. “Have you been waiting long for
+me?”</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>“All my life!” breathed Spencer.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>She laughed, a friendly, silvery laugh.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Like a sleep-walker, Spencer continued
+to plod toward her.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Six-feet one he was, a gridiron star,
+and yet this frail, slim wisp of a feminine
+creature towered inaccessibly above him
+in the mists of the pool.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Spencer reached her. He clasped his
+arms around her waist, and stretched and
+stretched, every sinew of his athletic body
+taut with the effort. He raised his heels
+from the ground, and strained on tiptoe.
+A sigh breathed upward from his lips.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>“Kiss me! Kiss me!” he pleaded.
+“Kiss me, though I die.”</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>But she stiffened, and held herself
+more aloof, and towered even more inaccessibly,
+while her beauty flamed out so
+intensely that it gripped Spencer’s heart
+with a stabbing pain.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Then her wide-spread arms floated
+down, until her slim, cool, white hands
+rested on Spencer’s shoulders. Her cameo-cut
+face inclined slightly, not enough to
+meet the upward-straining lips of the
+young man, but merely enough so that
+she could gaze coldly but enticingly down
+into his eyes.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Like a drowning man, there swept
+through his mind the vision of heads
+wrenched from male shoulders, sucked
+dry, and cast aside; male bodies shriveling
+and drifting away. Well, it was
+worth it, for that one moment of transcendent
+ecstasy. But, at the memory-picture
+of the transformation wrought in
+the beautiful mist-woman by that long,
+passionate embrace, he shuddered momentarily.
+However, he would be gone
+then—he would not be there to see it.
+Once more he strained to reach his beloved.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>But the expected strangling wrench on
+his neck did not come. Instead the stiff
+aloofness of the beautiful girl softened.
+An expression of yielding consecration
+suffused her lovely face. She leaned, she
+bent over him, and floated down into his
+arms.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Their lips met and clung.</p>
+
+<hr class='tbk'/>
+
+<p class='pindent'>A breeze whipped her moon-green
+gown about him. Opening his eyes,
+he saw the mists blown away from the
+stone bench on which she had been standing,
+by the edge of the garden pool.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Now, nestled in his arms, she no longer
+seemed terrifyingly dominating and aloof,
+but instead small and sweet and soft.
+And she did not coarsen and sink back
+into the slime of the pool.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Side by side they sat down together on
+the stone bench, his arm about her slender
+waist, her golden head against his
+shoulder.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>For a long time they sat thus in silence.
+Then, “Tom,” she breathed.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>“You know my name?” he asked in
+surprise.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>“Why not?” she laughed a silvery
+moonlit laugh.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>Again they sat in silence.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>At last she pushed softly away from
+him. “Well, dear,” she said, “it is very
+late, and we really ought to be going in.”</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>“In? Into the pool?”</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>“No, silly! Into the house.”</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>He turned, and seized her by the shoulders,
+and stared fixedly down at her in
+the moonlight. Then, with a sigh of
+gladness, he clasped her to him.</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>“You’re Natalie Gordon!” he breathed.
+“You’re real! And I like you much better
+that way.”</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>“I don’t know what on earth you’re
+talking about,” said she, “but it’s all
+right with me.”</p>
+
+<p class='pindent'>She held up her face, and once more
+his lips closed on hers, this time in a
+wholly human embrace.</p>
+
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76112 ***</div>
+  </body>
+
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+book #76112 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/76112)