THE GIRL FROM INFINITE SMALLNESS

By RAY CUMMINGS

Young George Carter had always particularly liked the little rock garden which lay on the declivity behind his home. His mother, now dead, had designed and planted it with loving care. In the spring, and particularly on hot summer evenings when the moonlight patched the garden with silver, it was his favorite spot, the place where he liked to sit alone, smoking and dreaming.

Despite his intention of following in his father's footsteps and becoming a scientist, there was incongruously much of the dreamer, the romanticist, in young George Carter. At nineteen now, six feet tall, he was lean and rangy, with a rugged, handsome face, dark eyes and unruly, longish black hair. Admiring college girls had sometimes told him that he was a combination of Abe Lincoln and Lord Byron. That pleased him, though in his heart he knew it really wasn't very important.

He was finished with his studies now, ready for the world of achievement. His father, a retired Professor of Ethnology, had arranged the financing of an exploring expedition. Alice—George's twin sister, who from birth had been blind—was going to visit distant relatives. George and his father would go to central Asia. Perhaps they would find some Neanderthal skeletons, crumbling bones that could be pieced together thrillingly to throw more light upon the nature of our savage ancestors of a few million years ago.

It was an exciting prospect to young Carter. All the spirit of adventurous youth stirred within him at the thought of it. But nevertheless, this summer more than ever, when the night breeze rustled the leaves and the moonlight patched his mother's little rock garden, he found himself liking to lie out there alone, smoking and vaguely dreaming of things less remote than Asiatic Neanderthal skeletons of a million years ago.

Undoubtedly—this particular July evening—young Carter drowsed off into complete unconsciousness, with his long lanky figure sprawled in the chair. He was awakened by a faint vague sound so abnormal to the somnolent little garden that at once it snapped him into alertness. It sounded like a faint cry—a little gasp of human fear. He sat up, startled, but the sound was gone. There seemed nothing here but the patches of moonlight and the dim outlines of the garden.... Then Carter sucked in his breath and tensed, with his hands gripping the sides of his canvas chair. There was a girl standing off there between the sundial and the distant hedge—a girl smaller than Alice, with the moonlight shining on the pale fabric of her dress that hung from her shoulders to above her knees. A gray-blue cord crossed to divide her breasts, encircled her slim waist and hung with tassels down one side to her knees. He saw her face, with hair streaming down to frame it—a face that stared at him with terror.