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the water that imbibes its shade, growing thus blacker by what it preys
upon, may not the life of the Fay be to the death which engulfs it?"
As I thus mused, with half-shut eyes, while the sun sank rapidly to
rest, and eddying currents careered round and round the island, bearing
upon their bosom large, dazzling, white flakes of the bark of the
sycamore-flakes which, in their multiform positions upon the water, a
quick imagination might have converted into any thing it pleased, while
I thus mused, it appeared to me that the form of one of those very Fays
about whom I had been pondering made its way slowly into the darkness
from out the light at the western end of the island. She stood erect
in a singularly fragile canoe, and urged it with the mere phantom of an
oar. While within the influence of the lingering sunbeams, her attitude
seemed indicative of joy--but sorrow deformed it as she passed within
the shade. Slowly she glided along, and at length rounded the islet and
re-entered the region of light. "The revolution which has just been made
by the Fay," continued I, musingly, "is the cycle of the brief year of
her life. She has floated through her winter and through her summer. She
is a year nearer unto Death; for I did not fail to see that, as she came
into the shade, her shadow fell from her, and was swallowed up in the
dark water, making its blackness more black."
And again the boat appeared and the Fay, but about the attitude of the
latter there was more of care and uncertainty and less of elastic joy.
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