..
Everything around was waste and gloomy ... it seemed as if everything
were dead, leaving me alone among the living, and for me also a cold
death waited.
I was then eighteen years old--a good time!
I walked and walked along the cold wet sand, making my chattering
teeth warble in honour of cold and hunger, when suddenly, as I was
carefully searching for something to eat behind one of the empty
crates, I perceived behind it, crouching on the ground, a figure in
woman's clothes dank with the rain and clinging fast to her stooping
shoulders. Standing over her, I watched to see what she was doing. It
appeared that she was digging a trench in the sand with her
hands--digging away under one of the crates.
"Why are you doing that?" I asked, crouching down on my heels quite
close to her.
She gave a little scream and was quickly on her legs again. Now that
she stood there staring at me, with her wide-open grey eyes full of
terror, I perceived that it was a girl of my own age, with a very
pleasant face embellished unfortunately by three large blue marks.
This spoilt her, although these blue marks had been distributed with a
remarkable sense of proportion, one at a time, and all were of equal
size--two under the eyes, and one a little bigger on the forehead just
over the bridge of the nose.
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