ure herself,
in supreme anguish and abandonment, had cast herself prone on the earth,
and her great heart had throbbed audibly, shaking the world with its
beats. No more thunder followed, but the rain was coming down heavily
now in huge drops that fell straight through the gloomy, windless air.
In half a minute I was drenched to the skin; but for a short time
the rain seemed an advantage, as the brightness of the falling water
lessened the gloom, turning the air from dark to lighter grey. This
subdued rain-light did not last long: I had not been twenty minutes
in the wood before a second and greater darkness fell on the earth,
accompanied by an even more copious downpour of water. The sun had
evidently gone down, and the whole sky was now covered with one thick
cloud. Becoming more nervous as the gloom increased, I bent my steps
more to the south, so as to keep near the border and more open part of
the wood. Probably I had already grown confused before deviating and
turned the wrong way, for instead of finding the forest easier, it
grew closer and more difficult as I advanced. Before many minutes the
darkness so increased that I could no longer distinguish objects more
than five feet from my eyes. Groping blindly along, I became entangled
in a dense undergrowth, and after struggling and stumbling along for
some distance in vain endeavours to get through it, I came to a stand
at last in sheer despair. All sense of direction was now lost: I was
entombed in thick blackness--blackness of night and cloud and rain and
of dripping foliage and network of branches bound with bush ropes and
creepers in a wild tangle. I had struggled into a hollow, or hole, as
it were, in the midst of that mass of vegetation, where I could stand
upright and turn round and round without touching anything; but when I
put out my hands they came into contact with vines and bushes. To move
from that spot seemed folly; yet how dreadful to remain there standing
on the sodden earth, chilled with rain, in that awful blackness in which
the only luminous thing one could look to see would be the eyes, shining
with their own internal light, of some savage beast of prey! Yet the
danger, the intense physical discomfort, and the anguish of looking
forward to a whole night spent in that situation stung my heart less
than the thought of Rima's anxiety and of the pain I had carelessly
given by secretly leaving her.

It was then, with that pang in my heart, that I wa