'Without giving me time to answer, he said to Francesca, "We are going
to ride through the wood and shall join you at the other side, on the
high road, by the bridge"--and he reined in his horse.
'Why did I consent--why did I follow him? There was a sort of dazzle
before my eyes. I felt as if I were under the influence of some nameless
fascination, as if the landscape, the light, this incident, the whole
combination of circumstances were not new to me, but things that had all
happened to me before, in another existence, and were now only being
repeated. The impression is quite indescribable. My will seemed
paralysed. It was as when some incident of one's life reappears in a
dream, but with added details that differ from the real circumstances. I
shall never be able to adequately describe even a part of this strange
phenomenon.
'We rode in silence at a foot's pace; the cawing of the rooks, the dull
beat of the horses' hoofs and their noisy breathing in no way disturbed
the all-pervading peace that seemed to grow every minute deeper and more
magical.
'Ah, why did he break the spell we ourselves had woven?
'He began to speak; he poured out upon me a flood of burning
words--words which, in the silence of the wood, frightened me because
they carried with them an impression of something preternatural,
something indefinably weird and compelling.
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