th them was the unwearying chirping of the
field-crickets. "How busy they are at their work," thought the count,
"what a hurry they are in; it sounds as if each one were madly reeling
the thread off a spool. How those spools hum, how feverish is the
unrest in them." He felt agreeably aloof from this unrest. As he dozed
off, the voices seemed to withdraw, to become subdued. "Yes, yes, it
must be so, the restless voices move away, die away, and then--quiet.
Yes, it will be so--perhaps--we shall see."

Below along the box-hedge, however, Boris and Billy were still walking
up and down. Boris was talking passionately at Billy. He was quite pale
with eloquence, and knew how to put a wonderfully unreserved pathos
into his words.

"I know your father does not like me; he wishes to humiliate me. Of
course we are not loved here in your land. We are the irksome ones all
through history. Obstinate idealists are not loved. He who is born with
a pain, he who is brought up for a pain, is uncongenial, I know. To be
unhappy is out of date here among you, it is not _comme il faut_."

"Oh, Boris, why do you talk so," said Billy in a voice hoarse with
emotion, "we people here, all of us, like you."

Boris shrugged his shoulders. "All of us, good heavens, as if I cared
about that. But you, Billy, I know you are good, you are for
me,--but no, not as I understand it. Look, we Poles, all of us going
about with a wound in our hearts, understand love differently. We
demand a love which will take our side unconditionally, without a
question, without looking around, which is wholly, wholly, wholly for
us. But," and Boris made a gesture as if he were casting a world from
him, "but, where do we find such a love?"

The sun was now hanging above the fringe of forest, a raspberry-red
disk. Billy stood still and looked wide-eyed at the sun. The dark blue
of those eyes became bright with tears, and two tiny red suns were
reflected in them.

"Oh, Boris, why must you talk so," she struggled to say, "of course you
know--what shall I do, what can I do?"

"You can do everything," retorted Boris mysteriously.

Billy's heart swelled painfully with vast compassion for the handsome
pale lad before her, and it really seemed to her at this moment as if
she could do anything and everything for him.

The garden was now quite red with the light of evening. Everywhere the
young girls and men were standing together, excited by the violent,
many-colored light