“It’s true, René. You nearly let me wither away, and my life dwindle to ashes. I am often sick with fear when I think of it, how near I came to being one of your failures.”
On such evenings they would talk until darkness crept into the woods, and they woke to their mysterious night life when their sweetest songs are sung, and they are filled with magic snares and lurking dangers and conflicts. Sweet comfort was it to be together then amid so much menace and alien power, and they would go warily hand in hand until they came within sight of the lights of the great house. Then they would almost run until they reached the open lawn where the free air would beat upon their faces.
“I always feel,” René said once, “as though we had had a narrow escape.”
“In the woods, do you mean, or in life?”
“Both.”
“Escape from what, my dear?”
“I know,” he said. “This is the truth of us. Escape from sleep and death.”
[Transcriber’s Note]
This transcription is based on images posted by the Internet Archive scanned from a copy made available by the University of California: