Finally Frederic Henry and Catherine Barkley are reunited, but the atmosphere is very different from that of their last meeting in Milan. Although Catherine is somewhat oblivious to it, danger hovers everywhere. Henry characterizes himself as a masquerader in civilian clothes, a truant from school, and finally a criminal. "It's not deserting from the army. It's only the Italian army," Catherine reassures him, and us, continuing the pattern of rationalization begun near the start of the novel.
Notice the change — the growth — in Henry's character, demonstrated at the start of Chapter XXXIV. Of the hostile aviators with whom he shares a train compartment, he says that "in the old days I would have insulted them and picked a fight." Now, no longer insecure due to his experiences in love and war, he does not even feel insulted.
It is raining while Henry rides the train to Stresa, raining when he arrives, and raining while Henry and Catherine spend the night together in his hotel room. Remember Catherine's vision of herself dead in the rain. And note the undeniably ominous quality of what is perhaps the novel's best-known, most-quoted passage, which follows soon afterward:
