Dream Tales and Prose Poems eBook

white in maiden pomp with every petal open to its full, as though they knew their safety out of reach.  I longed to pick one of them, and behold, I found myself at once on the river’s surface....  The damp air struck me an angry blow in the face, just as I broke the thick stalk of a great flower.  We began to fly across from bank to bank, like the water-fowl we were continually waking up and chasing before us.  More than once we chanced to swoop down on a family of wild ducks, settled in a circle on an open spot among the reeds, but they did not stir; at most one of them would thrust out its neck from under its wing, stare at us, and anxiously poke its beak away again in its fluffy feathers, and another faintly quacked, while its body twitched a little all over.  We startled one heron; it flew up out of a willow bush, brandishing its legs and fluttering its wings with clumsy eagerness:  it struck me as remarkably like a German.  There was not the splash of a fish to be heard, they too were asleep.  I began to get used to the sensation of flying, and even to find a pleasure in it; any one will understand me, who has experienced flying in dreams.  I proceeded to scrutinise with close attention the strange being, by whose good offices such unlikely adventures had befallen me.

VII

She was a woman with a small un-Russian face.  Greyish-white, half-transparent, with scarcely marked shades, she reminded one of the alabaster figures on a vase lighted up within, and again her face seemed familiar to me.

‘Can I speak with you?’ I asked.

‘Speak.’

’I see a ring on your finger; you have lived then on the earth, you have been married?’

I waited ...  There was no answer.

‘What is your name, or, at least, what was it?’

‘Call me Alice.’

’Alice!  That’s an English name!  Are you an Englishwoman?  Did you know me in former days?’

‘No.’

‘Why is it then you have come to me?’

‘I love you.’

‘And are you content?’

‘Yes; we float, we whirl together in the fresh air.’

‘Alice!’ I said all at once, ‘you are perhaps a sinful, condemned soul?’

My companion’s head bent towards me.  ‘I don’t understand you,’ she murmured.

‘I adjure you in God’s name....’  I was beginning.

‘What are you saying?’ she put in in perplexity.  ‘I don’t understand.’

I fancied that the arm that lay like a chilly girdle about my waist softly trembled....

‘Don’t be afraid,’ said Alice, ‘don’t be afraid, my dear one!’ Her face turned and moved towards my face....  I felt on my lips a strange sensation, like the faintest prick of a soft and delicate sting....  Leeches might prick so in mild and drowsy mood.

VIII