And when would it come? What tortures would I have to endure before it caressed me and soothed my sufferings? . . . Soon I began to observe that from time to time my sight failed me. Suddenly all the objects before me seemed to flow together and disappear into a kind of grey darkness, then suddenly and unexpectedly they would become clear again. . . . I thought this was caused simply by fatigue, but I do not know what part the changes of the light played in it; whenever the light changed slightly, things became visible again, and even very distinctly visible, and I could see very far and then again they became misty. The sun that showed itself for an hour behind the distant hillocks shed a wonderful pink light on the snow, that covered these mounds; this occurs before evening, then the sun suddenly disappears and the rose-coloured light changes to an exquisite blue. It was so now: everything near and around me turned blue, as if sprinkled with sapphire dust, wherever there was a rut, or the mark of a footstep, or even where a stick, had been stuck into the snow, a bluish mist curled in clouds, and after a short time this play of light was also extinguished: the wilderness, as if covered with an overturned bowl, became dark and then . . . . grew grey. With this last change, when the wonderful blue colour disappeared, and
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On the Edge of the World
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