yet, by doing something in
it, made ANYWHERE into a place! I was not yet alive; I was only dreaming
I lived! I was but a consciousness with an outlook! Truly I had been
nothing else in the world I had left, but now I knew the fact! I said
to myself that if in this forest I should catch the faint gleam of the
mirror, I would turn far aside lest it should entrap me unawares, and
give me back to my old existence: here I might learn to be something by
doing something! I could not endure the thought of going back, with so
many beginnings and not an end achieved. The Little Ones would meet what
fate was appointed them; the awful witch I should never meet; the dead
would ripen and arise without me; I should but wake to know that I had
dreamed, and that all my going was nowhither! I would rather go on and
on than come to such a close!

I went deeper into the wood: I was weary, and would rest in it.

The trees were now large, and stood in regular, almost geometric,
fashion, with roomy spaces between. There was little undergrowth, and
I could see a long way in every direction. The forest was like a great
church, solemn and silent and empty, for I met nothing on two feet or
four that day. Now and then, it is true, some swift thing, and again
some slow thing, would cross the space on which my eye happened that
moment to settle; but it was always at some distance, and only enhanced
the sense of wideness and vacancy. I heard a few birds, and saw plenty
of butterflies, some of marvellously gorgeous colouring and combinations
of colour, some of a pure and dazzling whiteness.

Coming to a spot where the pines stood farther apart and gave room for
flowering shrubs, and hoping it a sign of some dwelling near, I took the
direction where yet more and more roses grew, for I was hungry after the
voice and face of my kind--after any live soul, indeed, human or not,
which I might in some measure understand. What a hell of horror, I
thought, to wander alone, a bare existence never going out of itself,
never widening its life in another life, but, bound with the cords of
its poor peculiarities, lying an eternal prisoner in the dungeon of its
own being! I began to learn that it was impossible to live for oneself
even, save in the presence of others--then, alas, fearfully possible!
evil was only through good! selfishness but a parasite on the tree
of life! In my own world I had the habit of solitary song; here not a
crooning murmur ever parted my