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 heart; my previous apprehensions
vanished; I could not resign myself to the idea that my companion would not
come back to me again.
‘Alice! Alice! come! Can it be you will not come?’ I shouted, for the last
time.
A crow, who had been waked by my voice, suddenly darted upwards into a
tree-top close by, and catching in the twigs, fluttered his wings.... But
Alice did not appear.
With downcast head, I turned homewards. Already I could discern the black
outlines of the willows on the pond’s edge, and the light in my window
peeped out at me through the apple-trees in the orchard--peeped at me, and
hid again, like the eye of some man keeping watch on me--when suddenly I
heard behind me the faint swish of the rapidly parted air, and something at
once embraced and snatched me upward, as a buzzard pounces on and snatches
up a quail.... It was Alice sweeping down upon me. I felt her cheek against
my cheek, her enfolding arm about my body, and like a cutting cold her
whisper pierced to my ear, ‘Here I am.’ I was frightened and delighted both
at once.... We flew at no great height above the ground.
‘You did not mean to come to-day?’ I said.
‘And you were dull without me? You love me? Oh, you are mine!’
The last words of Alice confused me.... I did not know what to say.
‘I was kept,’ she went on; ‘I was watched.’
‘Who could keep you?’
‘Where would you like to go?’ inquired Alice, as usual not answering my
question.
‘Take me to Italy--to that lake, you remember.’
Alice turned a little away, and shook her head in refusal. At that point I
noticed for the first time that she had ceased to be transparent. And her
face seemed tinged with colour; there was a faint glow of red over its
misty whiteness. I glanced at her eyes ... and felt a pang of dread; in
those eyes something was astir--with the slow, continuous, malignant
movement of the benumbed snake, twisting and turning as the sun begins to
thaw it.
‘Alice,’ I cried, ‘who are you? Tell me who you are.’
Alice simply shrugged her shoulders.
I felt angry ... I longed to punish her; and suddenly the idea occurred
to me to tell her to fly with me to Paris. ‘That’s the place for you to
be jealous,’ I thought. ‘Alice,’ I said aloud, ‘you are not afraid of big
towns--Paris, for instance?’
‘No.’
‘Not even those parts where it is as light as in the boulevards?’
‘It is not the light of day.’
‘Good; then take me at once to the Boulevard des Italiens.’
Alice wrapped the end of her long hanging sleeve about my head. I was at
once enfolded in a sort of white vapour full of the drowsy fragrance of the
poppy. Everything disappeared at once; every light, every sound, and almost
consciousness itself. Only the sense of being alive remained, and that was
not unpleasant.
Suddenly the vapour vanished; Alice took her sleeve from my head, and I
saw at my feet a huge mass of closely--packed buildings, brilliant light,
movement, noisy traffic.... I saw Paris.