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The Witch of Prague by F. Marion (Francis Marion) Crawford
page 22 of 480 (04%)
existence, that he was being gradually drawn away from his identity, and
was losing the power of thinking his own thoughts. He reasoned as
the shadows reason in dreamland, the boundaries of common probability
receded to an immeasurable distance, and he almost ceased to know where
reality ended and where imagination took up the sequence of events.

Who was this woman, who called herself Unorna? He tried to consider the
question, and to bring his intelligence to bear upon it. Was she a great
lady of Prague, rich, capricious, creating a mysterious existence for
herself, merely for her own good pleasure? Her language, her voice,
her evident refinement gave colour to the idea, which was in itself
attractive to a man who had long ceased to expect novelty in this
working-day world. He glanced at her face, musing and wondering,
inhaling the sweet, intoxicating odours of the flowers and listening to
the tinkling of the hidden fountain. Her eyes were gazing into his, and
again, as if by magic, the curtain of life's stage was drawn together
in misty folds, shutting out the past, the present, and the future, the
fact, the doubt, and the hope, in an interval of perfect peace.

He was roused by the sound of a light footfall upon the marble pavement.
Unorna's eyes were turned from his, and with something like a movement
of surprise he himself looked towards the new comer. A young girl was
standing under the shadow of a great letonia at a short distance from
him. She was very pale indeed, but not with that death-like, waxen
pallor which had chilled him when he had looked upon that other face.
There was a faint resemblance in the small, aquiline features, the dress
was black, and the figure of the girl before him was assuredly neither
much taller nor much shorter than that of the woman he loved and sought.
But the likeness went no further, and he knew that he had been utterly
mistaken.
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