“But you have rules for your hostel.”
“I always allow them to be broken when there is anything to be gained by it. I love defiance, but I hate slyness. Rules must be broken, they must not be evaded. But we are beginning to talk for the sake of talking, and Cathleen is nearly asleep. I’m glad you have had a good day.”
“Such a day,” he said, “as I never had. I seem to have found that for which I have always been searching, and it has made everything valuable, even those things that I have most hated.”
“I hope,” said Lotta, “that you don’t think you have arrived at any conclusion. It is impossible to decide anything about life. It is possible only to live—sometimes.”
They went to bed very early. The wind had risen to. a gale and screamed in the chimneys and the eaves.
Hardly had René sunk into sleep, the quick easy slumber of health and peace, than he was roused by a fearful din. Leaping out of bed, he ran to the window and opened it. The wind came rushing in upon his bare chest and made him gasp for breath. Out on the road was a crowd of men armed with rattles, tin cans, kettles, baths, which they banged and whirled in the air as they marched solemnly up the road to the next cottage. There they moved slowly up and down, making a terrible noise and chanting:
There’s evil enough between wind and water
Without your tumbling of the farmer’s daughter.
Do you hear Billy Bows behind the door?
There’s no honest girl shall be a whore,