when I fly, I keep feeling as though some one were sucking at it, or as
it were drawing something out of it--as the spring sap is drawn out of
the birch-tree, if you stick an axe into it. I'm sorry, though. And Alice
too.... She is playing cat and mouse with me ... still she can hardly wish
me harm. I will give myself up to her for the last time--and then.... But
if she is drinking my blood? That's awful. Besides, such rapid locomotion
cannot fail to be injurious; even in England, I'm told, on the railways,
it's against the law to go more than one hundred miles an hour....'

So I reasoned with myself--but at ten o'clock in the evening, I was already
at my post before the old oak-tree.


XVIII

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.