"Give me your hand," he said. "No, the left one." He saw that she
was not wearing her engagement ring.

"Where's your ring?" he asked.

"I've lost it," she replied.

"You are my Anna, and yet you are not," he exclaimed. "A stranger
has taken possession of you."

As he said these words, she looked at him with a side-long glance,
and all at once he realised that her eyes were not human, but the
blood-shot eyes of a bull; and then he understood.

"Begone, witch!" he cried, and breathed into her face.

If you could only have seen what happened now! The would-be Anna
was immediately transformed, her face grew green and yellow like
gall, and she burst with rage; at the next moment a black rabbit
jumped over the bilberry bushes and disappeared in the wood.

Victor stood alone in the perplexing, bewildering forest, but he
was not afraid. "I will go on," he thought, "and if I should meet
the devil himself, I will not be afraid; I shall say the Lord's
Prayer, and that will go a long way towards protecting me."

He trudged on and presently he came to a cottage. He knocked; the
door was opened by an old woman; he inquired whether he could stay
the night. He could stay, if he liked, but the old dame had nothing
to offer him but a small attic, which was only so so.