And lo! again I hear behind me those same light, measured footsteps
which seem to be creeping stealthily up.
"There's that woman again!" I said to myself.--"Why has she attached
herself to me?"--But at this point I mentally added: "Probably, owing to
her blindness, she has lost her way, and now she is guiding herself by
the sound of my steps, in order to come out, in company with me, at some
inhabited place. Yes, yes; that is it."
But a strange uneasiness gradually gained possession of my thoughts: it
began to seem to me as though that old woman were not only following
me, but were guiding me,--that she was thrusting me now to the right,
now to the left, and that I was involuntarily obeying her.
Still I continue to walk on ... but now, in front of me, directly in my
road, something looms up black and expands ... some sort of pit.... "The
grave!" flashes through my mind.--"That is where she is driving me!"
I wheel abruptly round. Again the old woman is before me ... but she
sees! She gazes at me with large, evil eyes which bode me ill ... the
eyes of a bird of prey.... I bend down to her face, to her eyes....
Again there is the same film, the same blind, dull visage as before....
"Akh!" I think ... "this old woman is my Fate--that Fate which no man
can escape!
"I cannot get away! I cannot get away!--What madness.... I must make an
effort." And I dart to one side, in a different direction.
I advance briskly.... But the light footsteps, as before, rustle behind
me, close, close behind me.... And in front of me again the pit yawns.
Again I turn in another direction.... And again there is the same
rustling behind me, the same menacing spot in front of me.
And no matter in what direction I dart, like a hare pursued ... it is
always the same, the same!
"Stay!" I think.--"I will cheat her! I will not go anywhere at
all!"--and I instantaneously sit down on the ground.
The old woman stands behind me, two paces distant.--I do not hear her,
but I feel that she is there.
And suddenly I behold that spot which had loomed black in the distance,
gliding on, creeping up to me itself!
O God! I glance behind me.... The old woman is looking straight at me,
and her toothless mouth is distorted in a grin....
"Thou canst not escape!"
February, 1878.