night appear to be gloating on her steps. Now she
would stand still, and the silence, would grow and grow, till it weighed
upon her breathing; and then she would address herself again to run,
stumbling, falling, and still hurrying the more. And presently the whole
wood rocked and began to run along with her. The noise of her own mad
passage through the silence spread and echoed, and filled the night with
terror. Panic hunted her: Panic from the trees reached forth with
clutching branches; the darkness was lit up and peopled with strange
forms and faces. She strangled and fled before her fears. And yet in
the last fortress, reason, blown upon by these gusts of terror, still
shone with a troubled light. She knew, yet could not act upon her
knowledge; she knew that she must stop, and yet she still ran.

She was already near madness, when she broke suddenly into a narrow
clearing. At the same time the din grew louder, and she became conscious
of vague forms and fields of whiteness. And with that the earth gave
way; she fell and found her feet again with an incredible shock to her
senses, and her mind was swallowed up.

When she came again to herself, she was standing to the mid-leg in an icy
eddy of a brook, and leaning with one hand on the rock from which it
poured. The spray had wet her hair. She saw the white cascade, the
stars wavering in the shaken pool, foam flitting, and high overhead the
tall pines on either hand serenely drinking starshine; and in the sudden
quiet of her spirit she heard with joy the firm plunge of the cataract in
the pool. She scrambled forth dripping. In the face of her proved
weakness, to adventure again upon the horror of blackness in the groves
were a suicide of life or reason. But here, in the alley of the brook,
with the kind stars above her, and the moon presently swimming into
sight, she could await the coming of day without alarm.

This lane of pine-trees ran very rapidly down-hill and wound among the
woods; but it was a wider thoroughfare than the brook needed, and here
and there were little dimpling lawns and coves of the forest, where the
starshine slumbered. Such a lawn she paced, taking patience bravely; and
now she looked up the hill and saw the brook coming down to her in a
series of cascades; and now approached the margin, where it welled among
the rushes silently; and now gazed at the great company of heaven with an
enduring wonder. The early evening had fallen