Page:The Novels of Ivan Turgenev (volume X).djvu/256

Rh I still go on, however. . . but, behold, before me, on my very road, something black and wide ... a kind of hole. . . . ' A grave!' flashed through my head. 'That is where she is driving me!'

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.