I still go on, however . . . but, behold, before me, on my very road, something black and wide ... a kind of hole. . . . ' A grave!' flashed through my head. 'That is where she is driving me!'
I turned sharply back. The old woman faced me again . . . but she sees! She is looking at me with big, cruel, malignant eyes . . . the eyes of a bird of prey. . . . I stoop down to her face, to her eyes. . . . Again the same opaque membrane, the same blind, dull countenance. . . .
'Ah!' I think, 'this old woman is my fate. The fate from which there is no escape for man!'
'No escape! no escape! What madness. . . . One must try.' And I rush away in another direction.
I go swiftly. . . . But light footsteps as before patter behind me, close, close. . . . And before me again the dark hole.
Again I turn another way. . . . And again the same patter behind, and the same menacing blur of darkness before.
And whichever way I run, doubling like a hunted hare . . . it 's always the same, the same!
'Wait!' I think, 'I will cheat her! I will go nowhere!' and I instantly sat down on the ground.
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