Page:Weird Tales volume 32 number 01.djvu/82

"Ruth, I can't live without you now that I've met you. I can't!"

It was on a night a little later that Ruth, somewhat hesitantly, made her suggestion. The moon flooded the garden with calm silver, gleamed on David Rand's folded wings as he sat with keen young face bent eagerly toward the girl.

She said, "David, there is a way in which we could marry and be happy, if you love me enough to do it."

"I'll do anything!" he cried. "You know that."

She hesitated.

"Your wings—they're what keep us apart. I can't have a husband who belongs more to the wild creatures than to the human race, a husband whom everyone would consider a freak, a deformed oddity. But if you were to have your wings taken off——"

He stared at her. "My wings taken off?"

She explained in an eager little rush of words. "It's quite practicable, David. Doctor White, who treated you for that wound and who examined you then, has told me that it would be quite easy to amputate your wings above their bases. There would be no danger at all in it, and it would leave only the slight projection of the stumps on your back. Then you'd be a normal man and not a freak," she added, her soft face earnest and appealing. "Father would give you a position in his business, and instead of an abnormal, roaming, half-human creature you would be like—like everyone else. We could be so happy then."

David Rand was stunned. "Amputate my wings?" he repeated almost uncomprehendingly. "You won't marry me unless I do that?"

"I can't," said Ruth painfully. "I love you, David, I do—but I want my husband to be like other women's husbands."

"Never to fly again," said David slowly, his face white in the moonlight: "To become earthbound, like everyone else! No!" he cried, springing to his feet in a wild revulsion. "I won't do it—I won't give up my wings! I won't become like——"

He stopped abruptly. Ruth was sobbing into her hands. All his anger gone, he stooped beside her, pulled down her hands, yearningly tilted up her soft, tear-stained face.

"Don't cry, Ruth," he begged. "It isn't that I don't love you—I do, more than anything else on earth. But I had never thought of giving up my wings—the idea stunned me." He told her, "You go on into the house. I must think it over a little."

She kissed him, her mouth quivering, and then was gone through the moonlight to the house. And David Rand remained, his brain in turmoil, pacing nervously in the silver light.

Give up his wings? Never again to dip and soar and swoop with the winged things of the sky, never again to know the mad exaltation and tameless freedom of rushing flight?

Yet—to give up Ruth—to deny this blind, irresistible yearning for her that beat in every atom of him—to know bitter loneliness and longing for her the rest of his life—how could he do that? He couldn't do it. He wouldn't.

So David went rapidly toward the house and met the girl waiting for him on the moonlit terrace.

"David?"

"Yes, Ruth, I'll do it. I'll do anything for you."

She sobbed happily on his breast. "I knew you really loved me, David. I knew it."