k, there is a knife--it
is a friend; take it and press it deep in your breast--it will feel
like the softest touch of the evening wind. Look, the river is in
flood....' And I have hardly dared to pass by the well, for it looked
up at me so strangely with its dark eye. And I know I should have
given way if you had not saved me. When I thought how you would feel
if you heard what I had done, I seemed to see you so clearly; you
looked at me reproachfully, only looked at me without a word, and I
felt ashamed that I had ever thought of what would cause you sorrow.
And you nodded, and forgave me, and all was well again.

"Then I took to hoping that some miracle should bring you back to me.
I hoped something might happen to you, so that I could buy your life
with mine. You might be bitten by a snake--it does happen sometimes.
Coming up one night with the lumbermen, and then next morning the news
would be all over the place, how you had been bitten, and were on
the point of death; and I would hurry down with the rest to where you
were, and bend down beside you, and press my lips to the place and
draw the poison out. And then I could feel it passing with your blood
into my veins, in a great wave of happiness. And soon I should sink
down beside you on the grass; but you would be saved, and you would
know I had been true to you until death.

"So I waited year after year. Then I wanted you to be ill--very, very
ill for a long time, and weak, till your heart could hardly beat at
all for want of blood, and you lay in a trance. Then the doctors would
say, if anyone would give their blood he might come to life again.
But no one could be found, for there were only strangers there. Then
I hear about it, and come quickly, and the doctors start at once, for
there is no time to be lost. And they draw off my blood and let it
flow into your body, and it acts at once, and you move a little,
though you are still in a trance. 'A little more,' say the
doctors--'see, the girl is smiling; it will do her no harm.' And they
only see that I smile, and do not know how weak I am already. And when
you wake, I am cold and pale already, but happy as a bride, and you
kiss me on the lips like a lover. For now I am your bride, and one
with you for ever, and I cannot die, for my blood lives in you!

"But all this was only dreams. You were not ill, nor bitten by a
snake, and at last I did not even know where you were. And then I
wanted to die, for I felt so