I turned sharply back. The old woman faced me again ... but she sees! She is looking at me with big, cruel, malignant eyes ... the eyes of a bird of prey.... I stoop down to her face, to her eyes.... Again the same opaque membrane, the same blind, dull countenance.... ‘Ah!’ I think, ‘this old woman is my fate. The fate from which there is no escape for man!’ ‘No escape! no escape! What madness.... One must try.’ And I rush away in another direction. I go swiftly.... But light footsteps as before patter behind me, close, close.... And before me again the dark hole. Again I turn another way.... And again the same patter behind, and the same menacing blur of darkness before. And whichever way I run, doubling like a hunted hare ... it’s always the same, the same! ‘Wait!’ I think, ‘I will cheat her! I will go nowhere!’ and I instantly sat down on the ground. The old woman stands behind, two paces from me. I do not hear her, but I feel she is there. And suddenly I see the blur of darkness in the distance is floating, creeping of itself towards me! God! I look round again ... the old woman looks straight at me, and her toothless mouth is twisted in a grin. No escape! THE DOG Us two in the room; my dog and me.... Outside a fearful storm is howling. The dog sits in front of me, and looks me straight in the face. And I, too, look into his face. He wants, it seems, to tell me something. He is dumb, he is without words, he does not understand himself--but I understand him. I understand that at this instant there is living in him and in me the same feeling, that there is no difference between us. We are the same; in each of us there burns and shines the same trembling spark. Death sweeps down, with a wave of its chill broad wing.... And the end! Who then can discern what was the spark that glowed in each of us? No! We are not beast and man that glance at one another.... They are the eyes of equals, those eyes riveted on one another. And in each of these, in the beast and in the man, the same life huddles up in fear close to the other. _February 1878._ MY ADVERSARY I had a comrade who was my adversary; not in pursuits, nor in service, nor in love, but our views were never alike on any subject, and whenever we met, endless argument arose between us. We argued about everything: about art, and religion, and science, about life on earth and beyond the grave, especially about life beyond the grave. He was a person of faith and enthusiasm. One day he said to me, ‘You laugh at everything; but if I die before you, I will come to you from the other world.... We shall see whether you will laugh then.’ And he did, in fact, die before me, while he was still young; but the years went by, and I had forgotten his promise, his threat. One night I was lying in bed, and could not, and, indeed, would not sleep. In the room it was neither dark nor light. I fell to staring into the grey twilight.