'Give yourself up to me. I will do you no harm. Only say two words: "Take
me."'

I looked at her. 'What is she saying?' I thought. 'What does it all mean?
And how can she take me? Shall I try?'

'Very well,' I said, and unexpectedly loudly, as though some one had given
me a push from behind; 'take me!'

I had hardly uttered these words when the mysterious figure, with a sort of
inward laugh, which set her face quivering for an instant, bent forward,
and stretched out her arms wide apart.... I tried to dart away, but I was
already in her power. She seized me, my body rose a foot from the ground,
and we both floated smoothly and not too swiftly over the wet, still grass.


V

At first I felt giddy, and instinctively I closed my eyes.... A minute
later I opened them again. We were floating as before; but the forest was
now nowhere to be seen. Under us stretched a plain, spotted here and there
with dark patches. With horror I felt that we had risen to a fearful
height.

'I am lost; I am in the power of Satan,' flashed through me like lightning.
Till that instant the idea of a temptation of the evil one, of the
possibility of perdition, had never entered my head. We still whirled on,
and seemed to be mounting higher and higher.