And presently the
whole wood rocked and began to run along with her. The noise of her
own mad passage through the silence spread and echoed, and filled
the night with terror. Panic hunted her: Panic from the trees
reached forth with clutching branches; the darkness was lit up and
peopled with strange forms and faces. She strangled and fled before
her fears. And yet in the last fortress, reason, blown upon by
these gusts of terror, still shone with a troubled light. She knew,
yet could not act upon her knowledge; she knew that she must stop,
and yet she still ran.
She was already near madness, when she broke suddenly into a narrow
clearing. At the same time the din grew louder, and she became
conscious of vague forms and fields of whiteness. And with that the
earth gave way; she fell and found her feet again with an incredible
shock to her senses, and her mind was swallowed up.
When she came again to herself, she was standing to the mid-leg in
an icy eddy of a brook, and leaning with one hand on the rock from
which it poured. The spray had wet her hair. She saw the white
cascade, the stars wavering in the shaken pool, foam flitting, and
high overhead the tall pines on either hand serenely drinking
starshine; and in the sudden quiet of her spirit she heard with joy
the firm plunge of the cataract in the pool. She scrambled forth
dripping.
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