...
At all events, an article of so-and-so many columns has to be completed.
For the unpaid rent, and the landlady's inquiring look in the morning when
I met her on the stairs, tormented me the whole day; it rose up and
confronted me again and again, even in my pleasant hours, when I had
otherwise not a gloomy thought.
I must put an end to it, so I left the park hurriedly to fetch my pencil
from the pawnbroker's.
As I arrived at the foot of the hill I overtook two ladies, whom I passed.
As I did so, I brushed one of them accidentally on the arm. I looked up;
she had a full, rather pale, face. But she blushes, and, becomes suddenly
surprisingly lovely. I know not why she blushes; maybe at some word she
hears from a passer-by, maybe only at some lurking thought of her own. Or
can it be because I touched her arm? Her high, full bosom heaves violently
several times, and she closes her hand tightly above the handle of her
parasol. What has come to her?
I stopped, and let her pass ahead again. I could, for the moment, go no
further; the whole thing struck me as being so singular. I was in a
tantalizing mood, annoyed with myself on account of the pencil incident,
and in a high degree disturbed by all the food I had taken on a totally
empty stomach. Suddenly my thoughts, as if whimsically inspired, take a
singular direction. I feel myself seized with an odd desire to make this
lady afraid; to follow her, and annoy her in some way.
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