He hastily raised the trembling maiden in his arms, threw a lightning in front of him that traced a line of light along the whole dark passage, and wading through the waters that seemed to retreat from his feet, he hurried to the cavern's mouth. He bore her past the waterfall, and when he let her glide to earth, he took hold of her hand, as though he feared she would escape him. She often looked back and tried to think of the happy valley, but to her mental vision there ever appeared only the cave with its desperate inhabitants. She hoped the terrible man might grow weary, and then if sleep overcame him, she could flee; therefore she complained of fatigue. But Pain was never weary; he instantly carried her again, and went onwards yet faster.
"Be happy," he said, "for now at least some one carries you."
She turned her head away from his gleaming eyes. Then a great sense of weakness came over her, and it seemed to her as though they were going backwards, as though the rushing of the river came ever nearer, as though his eyes pierced her breast. Powerless to speak or move, she lay in the arms of Pain. Oh, where—where was her brother Death, who could have freed her? Where her father Strife? He would have wrestled with her captor. Or was he too powerless against this all-mighty Pain? She would have prayed the river, the trees, the grasses to help her, but they did not see her need. At last she lost consciousness, and when she woke she lay under a rock amid deep hot sand—no tree, no song of bird, no murmur of waters; only sand, yellow burning sand and golden air that quivered in the heat.
"My wife," said Pain, and his eyes burnt like the sand and the air, and seemed to drain Sorrow's life blood. Her tears began to flow anew.
"Oh! how thirsty I am," she moaned.
Pain looked at her with satisfaction.
"Well," he said, "was it not beautiful in that cool gorge, so near to the cold foaming river? Do you recall how clear it was, and how it gushed out of the rocks? It came from the happy valley, that is so full of luscious fruits, fruits such as you have never beheld. Shall I show it you?"
At his words Sorrow's eyes had grown ever bigger, her lips more parched.
"Yes, yes," she panted, and behold, away, across the sand, there shimmered in the air a broad stream, and beside it were shady trees laden with fruits. Without knowing what she did, Sorrow sprang up and ran to the river as fast as she could, through the deep sand, under the scorching sunbeams. But the river seemed to retreat ever further from her, and at last it had vanished. At the same moment Pain laughed behind her, and it sounded as though the whole desert laughed.