The moment they were inside the room, Clotilde rushed into the middle, gritting her teeth together and clenching her fists.
“Oh-h-h!” she exclaimed, with a cry of suppressed passion, “I can’t bear it. I shall go mad.”
Then with a bound she dashed to the bed, striking at it and seizing the pillow in her teeth.
Marie got rid of her suppressed vitality by fiercely seizing Ruth by the shoulders, shaking her angrily, and then, as if repenting, catching her about the waist, and waltzing her round the room.
“Oh, Clo! it’s horrible,” she cried, loosing Ruth to seize her sister. “Get up, and let’s quarrel or fight, or do something. I can’t—I won’t—I shan’t—I will not bear it. It’s like being mummies in a tomb.”
Clotilde turned round, and let herself sink upon the floor, with her head leaning back against the bed, biting the counterpane and twisting it viciously with her hands.
“’Rie,” she said at last, and her eyes sparkled as she spoke, “do you know what happened in the old days to the captive maidens in the stony castles?”
“Yes; the knights came and rescued them.”
“Then, why don’t they come and rescue us? I’ll run away with the first man who asks me. I’d marry that thin wretch Joseph to-morrow if he’d have me, and I’d stick pins in him all the rest of his life to see him writhe.”
“I can’t bear it much longer,” said Marie, in a low, deep voice; “I’m nineteen, Clo, and you are turned twenty, and they treat us as if we were little children still. Ah, how I hate them both!”