ILLIANDIA (Continued from page 3) but our union in my ancestral home among the things I had learned to worship. Why we weren't married upon our arrival home I shall never know. I doubt if Illiandia knew either. There was a pleasurable sensation gained from being just two people in love, a thrill which we both believed would disappear were we to wed. I suppose prosaic people would have shaken their heads and pursed their lips at such things, but we were too happy to be concerned about the thoughts of others. Sometimes Illiandia seemed distressed over our living together without the sanction of the church and society, but those periods of concern for convention were brief and soon gave way before her spirit of girlish irresponsibility. I should have seen that there were two Illiandia's: one surface frothy, carefree; the other deeper, moody, fitful, haunted, repressed. The deeper and more genuine Illiandia I never knew, save in moments when her whole being seemed distilled into sudden and almost insane fears and passions. I don't know when I first came to realize that I hated Illiandia. I only know her presence aroused in me a feeling of antagonism which disturbed my work The lines of a beautiful verse would fly from my brain if she were to enter the room while I was working, and a blind rage would take their place. Before, she had been an inspiration, but now her common tastes and irrepressible childishness were trying to my nature. She seemed to care little for the things for which I cared. Good books meant little to her. Fine art was looked at, commented on and immediately forgotten. Even my work seemed of less concern to her than the dance of the day. I had brought her into my house because I thought we held basic interests in common. But her fondness for trivial things persisted, and I came to loathe her for the lightness of her character and temperament. The climax of our dissension came one night when she burst into my study to tell me she was going to have a child. We were not married, and our romance had lost its gaiety now that she was faced with bearing an illegitimate. My train of thought was shattered by her entrance. A raging hate seized me. I screamed at her, forbidding her future entrance to my room while I was creating. She crouched against the door frame, her look an unearthly mingling of loneliness and horror, her tongue licking her lower lip. Then with a whimper, she rushed from the room. Next morning I found her dead in her room. At her side was a book of Poe open to one of our favorite verses: Be silent in that solitude, Which is not loneliness- for then The spirits of the dead, who stood In life before thee, are again In death around thee; and their will Shall overshadow thee; be still." I shuddered as I recalled her death, and I stirred the fire to drive away the specters of days past. Still those lines haunted me in refrain: Their will shall overshadow thee; be still." The thought possessed me that were I to visit the family vault at the end of the yard I should find Illiandia's casket empty. A wild trick of my imagination? Perhaps, and yet when a woman dies with an unborn child in her womb, who knows what may happen. The spirits of the dead who stood in life before thee." The low fire cast a glow across the room, filling the corners with leaping shadows, demons frolicking at a mad ceremony. The golden drawcord on Illiandia's picture seemed to reach forward as if I should pull it. That face was doing all with its deathly power to hold its place in my memory. She had always loved her cat, a large eyed, graceful, maltese. She sat one day before the mirror combing her raven hair. In a moment of abstraction she stroked the fur of the cat arched against her leg. Suddenly a gleam flashed into her eyes. Maddened at the cat's fur being softer than her own hair, she dashed a bottle of perfume into the animals eyes and laughed as it ran blindly around the room, finally falling to its death from her balcony. For the rest of the afiernoon she lay prone on the bed, lips parted and her tongue again and again moistening her lower lip the Illiandia of moments. With that memory came a sudden panic. I was confused; there must be some way to escape this thing but what thing was I running from? Did she live again? Then I knew. I must go to the vault. Quickly I made my way to the rear door and across the yard. Twenty-two ILLIANDIA (Continued from preceding page) Once inside the tomb, my pulses raced and the pounding blood echoed through my temples till I thought I should go mad. My feet made heavy sounds on the stone floor. The stillness was heavy with the voices of souls protesting my intrusion into their domain. Illiandia's coffin was newer than the rest. It looked out of place against the time-blackened others. Perhaps it was out of place, perhaps the soul of Illiandia had never been accepted by the normal dead. She carried a potential life to her grave to die bearing the heartbeat of another perhaps she was not allowed to be properly dead. I stood awed by the silence of dead things, unable to move towards the chamber which should hold the remnants of my once-beloved Illiandia. I was afraid, and yet the pounding of my blood drove me to look in that coffin. If I were to go find the box empty, I could never return to the rooms where I had lived with hed. Illandia alive, human, flesh and blood would be easier to bear, with all her strangeness, for a lifetime than one second ofIllliandia returned from a spirit world which rejected her. I must look in that coffin I must, must, must, must, must. I can't, can't, can't, can't . . . must . . . can't . . . must . . . can't . . . must, must, must. Turning, my brain reeling, almost paralysed with terror, I rushed from the vault, locking the heavy metal door behind me. Roses in the garden sent their perfume to my nostrils, clearing my jumbled thoughts and releasing the weight pressing upon me. I stooped to pick one of the blooms by the path, but as my hand touched it the petals detached themselves and fluttered to the ground, as if I had brought a portion of death from the sepulcher. There was a song of a cricket ratcheting its way through the night air, but it stopped as I approached. Even the moon disappeared behind a cloud bank when I cast my eyes upward. All of nature shunned my presence. Cold, despite the night's sultriness, I drew my collar closer about my throat and again entered the house. No human mind can comprehend the feeling I knew then. If there had been a sense of uncertainty previously it was forgotten in the ice-grip of this present terror. Fetid, damp, warm, heavy, once-breathed, leaden, tomb-air clung to my skin, making me feel bloated and soggy. I was tired of fighting the inevitable. Tired of fear and tired of death . . . Tired of coffins and memory and fear . . . There was a pull on every inch of my body. A magnet of horror drew me steadily toward my study. Volumes could be written of the hundreds no thousands of thoughts which passed through my mind while I completed the few steps necessary to bring me to the study door. But they are not to be placed on paper. They would be called the ravings of a madman. They are etched forever upon the pane of my past, and there they shall remain. When I was once within my room the lethargy ceased, and an almost superhuman keenness took its place. Illiandia's picture stood above the fireplace revealed in all its horror and beauty. Below it, crawling on all fours, gurgling, cooing, drooling through lips still full and youthful, was a being which bore the features of my once cared for Illiandia ... a tiny, tiny, child. IDEALISM by MARY STUART The soft, white crystals drift lazily down With all time to shift and glide Into eternity's misty void Unheedful of time and tide. I stand and watch this feathery train, These smoky wisps of calmness; And I think of the millions who toil and strain To die, weary, discouraged, haunted. Whispering, the huge white flakes Still drift against the straggling trees; A reaching arc of palest gray Descends, embracing lands and seas. One of the millions, I stand alone; I gaze where that white plane and arc have kissed; And I see that idealism for which I have searched That sereness, that calmness I ve somehow missed. Staff . . . REED CORAY Editor J. M. DEMOS WINSLOW GARDNER LOUISE de WIT DAN BAILEY Sophomore Associates BILLY JOHNSON Artist MAURINE DUFFIN WALTER CABLE Freshman Associates BUDD JOHNSON Photographer KENT BAGGS Circulation Manager BERNEICE McENTIRE Secretary DAVID R. TREVITHICK Faculty Advisor Twenty-three