“It’s just like having toothache very badly, only I never knew of a dentist who could pull out hearts.” But the pain became so bad that for the time she was silent too, like everything else round about. And then the stream flowed into a deep chasm that seemed to lead underground, only now and again you could hear the gurgling as it went, so that it never seemed to pass away, not quite.
After a time the road looked better again, for the rocks had vanished, but now and then in the gloom you put your foot down on a very sharp one, and when you drew it up quickly it gave you cramp, so that you almost feared to put it down.
This path made you very tired. You kept slipping because you could not see properly, and the worst of it was there was no path out, nor any back. You were forced forward by Silence, that cruel and most perfect teacher that sneers at heartaches and pain, and looks with a withering smile on self-pity.
You see it was a magical forest; to stand still was to fall, to fall was to be stifled by something. It is best to go on, therefore, as long as you can. And then, after a weary length of road had been travelled, the gloom turned to darkness, so gradually that at first you thought it was your eyes that were dim; and ever from the unseen channel came the gurgle of the stream, the only sound in the still forest.
Presently the darkness had turned to blackness, so that you groped the way along; and now the weird Silence and the gentle sound of the unseen stream led you between them in blind faith, till with a sudden bubble the stream shot up again and you slipped in the quagmire of leaves.
But the road was so black that you did not see the colour of the stream, and you thought it black too; and it softened the leaves and the black dust, and your feet slipped in it, and the pain was coming back to your heart as it had come at the fountain long since, only worse if anything, and perhaps different.
Then the road grew much worse, for this unseen fluid was covering it. Suddenly a light shone overhead, the first along the whole dark path, and soon it died away.
But to Deborah standing there uncertainly came a figure, a gliding spirit wearing a curious robe. At times it shone white as silver, and again black as dusky night.
“How familiar is this figure,” thought Deborah. “In some ways it is like the prayer. I ought to know it, and yet I don’t.”
But being extremely weary, for the road made you so, she had scarcely the strength to think at all.