Page:Twilight of the Souls (1917).djvu/279

Rh "But that's an exception, isn't it?"

"Yes, of course, it's an exception. Don't be anxious about me, Sissy. I've a hide like a rhinoceros. I'm the pachyderm of the family. I haven't got your dainty little constitution. . . ."

"I am so glad when I come to you, Gerrit. I always brighten up in your house."

"You haven't been gloomy, surely?"

"That's just what I have been, quite lately."

"And why, Connie?"

"I don't know. Because of the weather . . ."

"Are you afraid of it? It's beginning to rain again."

"As long as it doesn't pour, we can go on walking. . ..

"It does me good, especially the wind blowing about one. Do you like wind?"

"Yes, I do . . . but . . ."

"But what?"

"Sometimes I hear too much in it."

"My little fanciful sister of old! What do you hear in it?"

"Gloomy things, melancholy things . . . but always very big things . . . whereas we ourselves are so small, so very small. . . ."

"People never change. . . . You're just the little sister that you used to be . . . in the river . . . with your fairy-tales . . ."

"But what I hear in the wind is not a fairy-tale."