She lifted herself softly from the floor, and moved toward the door. She
passed the looking-glass on the dressing-table as she went, and cast a
darkling glance into it. A haggard ghost seemed to stare back at her,
with crazy eyes. A braid of brown, silky hair had become loosened, and
was creeping down upon the spectre's shoulders.
Sophie stole along as noiselessly as a cat. She descended the staircase,
glided down the passage, opened the outer door, and was on the frozen
porch. The chill of the air passed through her as if she had been indeed
but a spirit. The dream must surely be a dream of death. She ran down
the icy path to the gate, and, looking along the road, saw that a tall
figure had nearly reached the spur of the hill, around which the road
turned. By hurrying she would yet be able to over-take him. She passed
through the gate without causing a creak or a rattle, gathered up her
light skirt, and started to run as speedily as she might.
The cold snow penetrated through her thin slippers and made her feet
ache and sting. The breeze forced a cruel entrance through the bosom of
her dress, as if to freeze the heart that was beating so. As she ran on,
she began to pant so heavily it seemed as if every breath must be her
last. The familiar road, the well-known outline of the hills, the
stone-walls, the stretch of woods to the left, where she had walked so
often last fall, all looked now ghastly and unreal--a world whose only
sun was the moon--a fitting world for such a dream as this.
Still she staggered onward, slipping in the polished ruts of the
sleigh-runners, plunging into the deep snow. Her body was cold as the
winter itself, but her head was burning as if a fire were within it. She
reached the bend, and her eyes strained wildly up the road. There! far
ahead, marked black against the ghastly snow--there! still moving
away--farther away. Would she ever reach him?
It was hopeless, and yet she kept on. Rather than let him go without
having assured her it was all a wicked dream--without having hugged her
in his arms, and given her her good-night kiss--without having called
her his own, only Sophie, and promised he would always love her and no
other--rather than give up all this, she would die in the pursuit, and
it were well that she should die. So on she ran: her brain reeled, she
could scarcely feel whether her limbs yet moved: there was a griping in
her heart, and her breath came in short gasps of agony. The earth
darkened and tipped before her eyes, but her resolve never faltered. To
reach him, or die. Oh! how gladly she would die, if only she might
reach him. Was not that he--there--only a short way on? Might not her
voice reach him? Would not some good angel bear it to him? Even then she
stumbled, and fell forward on her knees; but, ere she sank quite down,
she threw forth a wild, piercing, despairing cry, giving to it her whole
desolate soul-"Bressant! Bressant!"