Ah! if they could
but be kept quiet and still, nor slip their usual harmless masks
to encourage with their interest the last speed of their most
deadly congener. What shape had they? Should he ever know? If it
were not that he was bound to compel the fell Thing that ran
before him into her truer form, he might face about and follow
them. No--no--not so; if he might do anything but what he
did--race, race, and racing bear this agony, he would just stand
still and die, to be quit of the pain of breathing.
He grew bewildered, uncertain of his own identity, doubting of his
own true form. He could not be really a man, no more than that
running Thing was really a woman; his real form was only hidden
under embodiment of a man, but what it was he did not know. And
Sweyn's real form he did not know. Sweyn lay fallen at his feet,
where he had struck him down--his own brother--he: he stumbled
over him, and had to overleap him and race harder because she who
had kissed Sweyn leapt so fast. "Sweyn, Sweyn, O Sweyn!"
Why did the stars stop to shudder? Midnight else had surely come!
The leaning, leaping Thing looked back at him with a wild, fierce
look, and laughed in savage scorn and triumph. He saw in a flash
why, for within a time measurable by seconds she would have
escaped him utterly. As the land lay, a slope of ice sunk on the
one hand; on the other hand a steep rose, shouldering forwards;
between the two was space for a foot to be planted, but none for a
body to stand; yet a juniper bough, thrusting out, gave a handhold
secure enough for one with a resolute grasp to swing past the
perilous place, and pass on safe.
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