than either of
you can imagine." He tapped his temple. "The garden's all here."

"You've killed it," she wept. "You've killed it in me. You've both
killed everything that's beautiful. But you're worse," she screamed at
Patrick, "because he only killed beauty once, but you brought it to life
just so you could kill it again. Oh, I can't stand it! I won't stand
it!" And she began to scream.

Patrick started toward her, but she broke off and whirled away from him
to the window, her eyes crazy.

"You've been lying to us," she cried. "The garden's there. I know it is.
But you don't want to share it with anyone."

[Illustration]

"No, no, Euphemia," Patrick protested anxiously. "It's hell out there,
believe me. I wouldn't lie to you about it."

"Wouldn't lie to me!" she mocked. "Are you afraid, too?"

With a sudden pull, she jerked open the window and stood before the
blank green-tinged oblong of darkness that seemed to press into the room
like a menacing, heavy, wind-urged curtain.

At that Hank cried out a shocked, pleading, "Effie!"

She ignored him. "I can't be cooped up here any longer," she said. "And
I won't, now that I know. I'm going to the garden."

Both men sprang at her, but they were too late. She leaped lightly to
the sill, and by the time they had flung themselves against it, her
footsteps were already hurrying off into the darkness.

"Effie, come back! Come back!" Hank shouted after her desperately, no
longer thinking to cringe from the man beside him, or how the gun was
pointed. "I love you, Effie. Come back!"

Patrick added his voice. "Come back, Euphemia. You'll be safe if you
come back right away. Come back to your home."

No answer to that at all.

They both strained their eyes through the greenish murk. They could
barely make out a shadowy figure about half a block down the near-black
canyon of the dismal, dust-blown street, into which the greenish
moonlight hardly reached. It seemed to them that the figure was scooping
something up from the pavement and letting it sift down along its arms
and over its bosom.

"Go out and get her, man," Patrick urged the other. "For if I go out for
her, I warn you I won't bring her back. She said something about having
stood the dust better than most, and that's enough for me."

But Hank, chained by his painfully learned habits and by something else,
could not move.

And then a ghostly voice came whispering down the street, chanting,
"Fire can hurt