I bent over her.

Alas, her eyelids were close shut! Hope and Imagination had wrought mutual illusion! my heart's desire would never be! I turned away, threw myself on the floor of the cave, and wept.

Then I bethought me that her eyes had been a little open, and that now the awful chink out of which nothingness had peered, was gone: it might be that she had opened them for a moment, and was again asleep!--it might be she was awake and holding them close! In either case, life, less or more, must have shut them! I was comforted, and fell fast asleep.
That night I was again bitten, and awoke with a burning thirst.
In the morning I searched yet more thoroughly, but again in vain.

The wound was of the same character, and, as before, was nearly well by the evening.

I concluded that some large creature of the leech kind came occasionally from the hot stream.