Thus I lived through three weary days.
On the fourth morning I found myself on a sandy plain bright with
the sun, and sat on a rock in its beams, for I loved now to enjoy its
long-withheld countenance. I silently fed my heart with its despair. A
light rustle startled me. Ready for flight I threw round me a hurried
glance; I saw no one, but in the sunny sand there glided past me a
human shadow, not unlike my own, which, wandering there alone,
seemed to have escaped from its possessor. There awoke in me a mighty
yearning. "Shadow," said I, "dost thou seek thy master? I will be he,"
and I sprang forward to seize it. I thought that if I succeeded in
treading on it so that its feet touched mine, it probably would remain
hanging there, and in time accommodate itself to me.
The shadow, on my moving, fled before me, and I was compelled to begin
a strenuous chase of the light fugitive, for which the thought of
rescuing myself from my fearful condition could alone have endowed me
with the requisite vigor. It flew toward a wood, at a great distance,
in which I must, of necessity, have lost it. I perceived this--a
horror convulsed my heart, inflamed my desire, added wings to my
speed; I gained evidently on the shadow, I came continually nearer,
I must certainly reach it. Suddenly it stopped, and turned toward me.
Like a lion on its prey, I shot with a mighty spring forward to make
seizure of it--and dashed unexpectedly against a hard and bodily
object.
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