roaned, the mill creaked, its wings swung about, the smoke was
driven back into the chimneys, and the window-panes became covered with
moisture.

There was a swishing of wind in the gable-windows, in the poplars of the
manor-house; the wind whistled through tattered bushes on the green hill
of Bredbjerg. Mogens lay up there, and gazed out over the dark earth.
The moon was beginning to acquire radiance, and mists were drifting down
on the meadow. Everything was very sad, all of life, all of life, empty
behind him, dark before him. But such was life. Those who were happy
were also blind. Through misfortune he had learned to see; everything
was full of injustice and lies, the entire earth was a huge, rotting
lie; faith, friendship, mercy, a lie it was, a lie was each and
everything; but that which was called love, it was the hollowest of all
hollow things, it was lust, flaming lust, glimmering lust, smoldering
lust, but lust and nothing else. Why had he to know this? Why had he not
been permitted to hold fast to his faith in all these gilded lies? Why
was he compelled to see while the others remained blind? He had a right
to blindness, he had believed in everything in which it was possible to
believe.

Down in the village the lights were being lit.

Down there home stood beside home. My home! my home! And my childhood's
belief in everything beautiful in the world.--And what if they were
right, the others! If the world were full of beating hearts and the
heavens full of a loving God! But why do I not know that, why do I know
something different? And I do know something different, cutting, bitter,
true...

He rose; fields and meadows lay before him bathed in moonlight. He went
down into the village, along the way past the garden of the manor-house;
he went and looked over the stone-wall. Within on a grass-plot in
the garden stood a silver poplar, the moonlight fell sharply on the
quivering leaves; sometimes they showed their dark side, sometimes
their white. He placed his elbows on the wall and stared at the tree; it
looked as if the leaves were running in a fine rain down the limbs.
He believed, that he was hearing the sound which the foliage produced.
Suddenly the lovely voice of a woman became audible quite near by:

"Flower in dew! Flower in dew!
Whisper to me thy dreams, thine own.
Does in them lie the same strange air
The same wonderful elfin air,
As in mine own?
Are they filled with whispers and sobbing