mmeled breath from a
breast of infinite capacity, and Billy too had to breathe, quite
deeply, before she swung herself upon the window-sill and jumped out.

The wind drove the rain into her face and took her breath. One moment
she stood there, bending forward slightly, like one who stands in the
ocean waiting for a wave to break over him. Then she ran into the
darkness with firm, obstinate steps. On the wet road lay a dull, dead
light. Billy followed it. Water leaped up against her legs with a
splash when she stepped into the puddles, and from her hat tiny cold
rivulets trickled down inside the collar of her cloak. Everything was
against her, everything that whispered, gurgled, snickered, and
murmured round about her, was hostile. It was frightful, and she was
frightened, but she had expected nothing else and she simply had to
advance. And in doing so she found in herself something that she had
never known there before, she found in herself the agitating feeling of
angry watchfulness and as it were sullen curiosity, which are of the
essence of courage. Thinking was impossible, she merely had to be on
her guard. So she rushed on. The road now grew dark. The great pines
murmured about her quite near at hand, and at times a wet branch struck
at her or tried to catch her, whereupon she would thrust it from her
fiercely and pugnaciously. A vast, dreamy resignation toward the
lurking Unknown made her almost apathetic. At the same time it was
queer enough that through all this time an image stood before her,
trying to be felt and seen. She saw herself clearly as if she were
walking by her own side: the slender figure in the brown rain-coat, the
wet hat on her head, bending forward slightly and running along the
unfamiliar black roads as resistlessly and unconsciously as a bullet
hurled by a powerful hand, forward over the roots that treacherously
placed themselves in her way, under the branches that tried to hold her
fast and drenched her with water, past great dusky birds that whirred
across the road, sending terrifying, wailing notes into the night.
But that had to be, life outside the garden-gates of Kadullen was
like that, and only thus could you fight your way back to those
garden-gates. And it seemed to Billy as if she could feel that here in
the gloomy world about her many such solitary figures were running down
black roads, quickly, quickly. She felt so strongly the presence of
these nocturnal comrades that they were u