e soft steps running, hurry, hurry, toward an unknown
goal. A great agitation made Billy shrink and shudder, such an
agitation as makes the universally familiar things round about seem
strange,--significant and as it were pregnant with secretly,
noiselessly advancing events. Billy was ready for any experience.
Boris' mellow voice seemed to raze all the barriers with which this
child had been solicitously hedged in. Ah yes, to be able to share
Boris' life, so full of great feelings and great words--this was what
Billy now must have.

"Billy," she heard a low voice in the darkness.

It was Boris. Billy was not surprised; she had felt him so passionately
all this time that his presence seemed to her a matter of course.

"Yes, Boris," she answered as softly.

He now stood quite close to her, she detected the strong, sweet perfume
he liked to use.

"Billy," he said, "I come to obtain certainty from you." He was silent,
but Billy could say nothing, and waited. The event whose noiseless
advance she had felt now stood before her.

"Look, Billy," continued Boris, and his voice sounded a trifle dry and
pedagogical, "I must know whether you are in my life that on which I
can absolutely rely. I cannot imagine my life without you, but for that
very reason I must not delude myself, for if I should be deluded in
this, it might be my destruction."

He waited again.

"But Boris, you surely know--" began Billy, but he interrupted her
irritably:

"No, I don't know, I can't know. You don't understand me, all that is
quite different."

Billy was ready to weep; the stern voice that challenged her out of the
darkness was torturing her unspeakably. "I do understand, certainly I
do. Why should I not understand you? Why do you say that? Go and talk
to papa tomorrow: they are all getting engaged, why must it be so
terribly sad in our case?" She was ready to weep; wearily she sat down
on the old box. Then she heard Boris laugh softly, it was the quick,
proud laugh with which he loved to conceal his agitation. Now he too
sat down on the box, took Billy's hand, this cold girlish hand, into
his own, as if it were something fragile and precious, and began to
speak again.

"No, no, you don't understand me. Of course I shall speak with your
father, for I want to be correct; but what good will it do?--your
father hates me. I have always had to fight for my happiness, and that
is what I want and you must want the same. Everything is immater