sucking at it, or as it were drawing something out of it — as the spring sap is drawn out of the birch-tree, if you stick an axe into it. I 'm sorry, though. And Alice too. . . . She is playing cat and mouse with me . . . still she can hardly wish me harm. I will give myself up to her for the last time — and then. . . . But if she is drinking my blood? That's awful. Besides, such rapid locomotion cannot fail to be injurious; even in England, I 'm told, on the railways, it 's against the law to go more than one hundred miles an hour. . . .'
So I reasoned with myself — but at ten o'clock in the evening, I was already at my post before the old oak-tree.
XVIII
The night was cold, dull, grey; there was a feeling of rain in the air. To my amazement, I found no one under the oak; I walked several times round it, went up to the edge of the wood, turned back again, peered anxiously into the darkness. . . . All was emptiness. I waited a little, then several times I uttered the name, Alice, each time a little louder, . . . but she did not appear. I felt sad, almost sick at
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