Now she hangs over the bank like a cloud of smoke, and the wind that blows upon my back, raises the edges of her dress like triangular pennants. "Stay, Thea.... I cannot follow you across the lake! ... The water will not upbear a mortal."... But the rising wind pushes her irresistibly on. Now I stand as the edge of the lake. The thin ice forces upward great hollow bubbles.... Will it suffer my groping feet? Will it break and whelm me in brackish water and morass? There is no room for hesitation. For already the wind is sweeping her afar. And I venture out upon the glassy floor which is no floor at all, but which a brief frost threw as a deceptive mirror across the deep. It bears me up for five paces, for six, for ten. Then suddenly the cry of harps is in my ear and something like an earthquake quivers through my limbs. And this sound grows into a mighty crunching and waxes into thunder which sounds afar and returns from the distance in echoing detonation. But at my left hand glitters a cleft which furrows the ice with manicoloured splinters and runs from me into the invisible. What is to be done? On... on...! And again the harps cry out and a great rattling flies forth and returns as thunder. And again a great cleft opens its brilliant hues at my side. On, on ... to seek her smiling, even though the smile is not for me. It will be for me if only I can grasp the hem of her garment. A third cleft opens; a fourth crosses it, uniting it to the first. I must cross. But I dare not jump, for the ice must not crumble lest an abysm open at my feet. It is no longer a sheet of ice upon which I travel--it is a net-work of clefts. Between them lies something blue and all but invisible that bears me by the merest chance. I can see the tangled water grasses wind about and the polished fishes dart whom my body will feed unless a miracle happens. Lit by the gathering afterglow a plain of fire stretches out before me, and far on the horizon the saving shore looms dark. Farther ... farther! Sinister and deceptive springs arise to my right and left and hurl their waters across my path.... A soft gurgling is heard and at last drowns the resonant sound of thunder. Farther, farther.... Mere life is at stake. There in the distance a cloud dislimns which but now lured me to death with its girlish smile. What do I care now? The struggle endures for eternities. The wind drives me on. I avoid the clefts, wade through the springs; I measure the distances, for now I have to jump.... The depths are yawning about me. The ice under my feet begins to rock. It rocks like a cradle, heaving and falling at every step ... It would be a charming game were it not a game with death. My breath comes flying ... my heart-beats throttle me ... sparks quiver before my eyes. Let me rock ... rock ... rock back to the dark sources of being. A springing fountain, higher than all the others, hisses up before me.... Edges and clods rise into points.