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.