ch,
thought Count Hamilcar. Billy stood there in her white dress, red
carnations at her belt, her arms hanging down, and the hands lightly
clasped. Her face was pale and her eyes very bright. She looks
resolute, flitted through the count's mind, Charlotte Corday at Marat's
bath-tub.

"I simply wanted to say, papa," began Billy, "that I am _for_ Boris,
that I am on his side. Even if you insult him and send him away, I am
for him, I must be."

She spoke calmly, only drawing the red carnations out of her belt and
nervously pulling them to pieces the while.

The count nodded: "Surely, child, I expected nothing else. I fear we
shall not convince each other. You will always see Boris otherwise than
I see him. Our points of vision are simply too different. We cannot
even hold the same opinion about what you are feeling. You consider it
something lasting, even something eternal, h'm? And I--something
transitory. Now I could appeal to my experience and say that I have
seen more things pass away than you have. But you will object that what
you are living through has never been experienced before, is unique. We
cannot meet anywhere. So there is nothing left for it but the old and
tried rule, that I decide and you obey. I am trustee of your life, and
when you begin to be your own trustee, I must hand it over to you
undiminished. But to throw in this Polish cousin I should regard as an
unprofitable debiting of this capital intrusted to me."

"But I prefer to have it debited and ... and ... and all you say, but
with Boris," cried Billy, angrily throwing her carnations on the floor.

The count shrugged his shoulders slightly. "Yes, my child, in this our
views differ, as I say, and for the present my view is the prevailing
one."

Billy was silent. She now let her arms hang limply, her eyes grew quite
round and clear, and into them came the strangest expression of
helplessness, even of fear. "Then--then--" she struggled to say, "then I
don't know."

A boundless repugnance for his paternal role rose in the count; was it
really his function to torture this lovely creature? But when he began
to speak, his voice sounded even somewhat more cool and ironical:

"Go now, my daughter. Perhaps it will afford you some peace of mind to,
think that for the pain which you are now feeling not you are
responsible, but I. Life is rich in such little auxiliary hypotheses,
as the professor would say, and why should we not use them."

Billy no