Page:Fantastic v08n11 1959-11.djvu/54

with distasteful overtones—I hardly know why I should have burdened you with it. Come, let us return. Here's our doorway again. We have taken rather long, Olafson will have climbed from his Hole and be waiting at the Folly.

Di, why did you touch my cheek? Look up, you say?

Di, that glimmering! What is it? What are they? What are those ghostly figures of ice and fire moving up the sky, those jeweled deities, that heroic procession? I'm frightened, Di, hold me close—no, no, pardon an old man's weakness, but what was it that we saw? I'm shaking still. What was it? Again the impossibly improbable? Look at the multitudinous lights of a city long enough . . .

Di, what's happening tonight? What are you doing?—it is your doing, isn't it? All of a sudden these things are too much for me, too many for me. Why did you come to me tonight? Why did you come back, really? Were you really a student of mine? Is this some last hoax? No, I don't see how, but—

The Folly? We can't go to the Folly now. I feel . . . Yes, I suppose we could, but . . . Very well.

Di! Yes, I'm coming, but the stone, here, by the door—it feels like velvet, like silver velvet! Touch gray stone long enough . . . Di, am I going mad? Wait for me, Di!

Watch out, Di! Watch out for Olafson—I don't think he can see you. Olafson, don't walk into the lady! Olafson, what's happened to you? Olafson!

He moves past us as if we weren't there! And he's smiling, smiling like a man in ecstasy. Do you see that? Olafson is smiling.

What's that that fluttered from his hand? I'll get it. A torn-off scrap of paper—the Folly's last measurements. I'll look at them.

Di! Where are you, Di?

Di, who were you?