The vastness of the solitude in which we
sat, the dark void above, through which the stars kept shooting,
the black gulf below in which the unseen waters boiled and
surged, the absence of other human company or other signs of
human existence, put such a face upon the deed that I gave up the
thought of it with a shudder, and resigned myself, instead, to
watch through the night--the long, cold, Pyrenean night.
Presently he curled himself up like a dog and slept in the blaze,
and then for a couple of hours I sat opposite him, thinking. It
seemed years since I had seen Zaton's or thrown the dice. The
old life, the old employments--should I ever go back to them?--
seemed dim and distant. Would Cocheforet, the forest and the
mountain, the grey Chateau and its mistresses, seem one day as
dim? And if one bit of life could fade so quickly at the
unrolling of another, and seem in a moment pale and colourless,
would all life some day and somewhere, and all the things we--But
enough! I was growing foolish. I sprang up and kicked the wood
together, and, taking up the gun, began to pace to and fro under
the cliff.
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