Nouronihar, compressing her hands upon her bosom, hesitated for some
moments to advance; the solitude of her situation was new, the silence of
the night awful, and every object inspired sensations which till then she
never had felt: the affright of Gulchenrouz recurred to her mind, and she
a thousand times turned to go back, but this luminous appearance was
always before her; urged on by an irresistible impulse, she continued to
approach it, in defiance of every obstacle that opposed her progress.
At length she arrived at the opening of the glen; but, instead of coming
up to the light, she found herself surrounded by darkness, excepting that
at a considerable distance a faint spark glimmered by fits. She stopped
a second time; the sound of water-falls mingling their murmurs, the
hollow rustlings amongst the palm-branches, and the funereal screams of
the birds from their rifted trunks, all conspired to fill her with
terror; she imagined every moment that she trod on some venomous reptile;
all the stories of malignant Dives and dismal Gouls thronged into her
memory; but her curiosity was, notwithstanding, more predominant than her
fears; she therefore firmly entered a winding track that led towards the
spark, but, being a stranger to the path, she had not gone far till she
began to repent of her rashness.
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