More pricing-up of the soul, albeit for different motives. This strange and metaphysical story, inspired by Andersen's The Little Mermaid and The Shadow, was my favourite as a child (I owned the beautiful edition illustrated by Harold Jones). I couldn't have understood it fully but I loved it for its language and imagery and for its genuine spookiness. The cutting-off of the immortal part – by moonlight, with a green-handled knife on wet sand – is particularly arresting, as is the shivery final paragraph. And then we have sentences such as this: "The other kept munching scented pastilles, which he took with an affected gesture out of an oval box of lilac enamel." Delicious.