hat so?" Moritz was provoked. "Then what is Polish love?"

"Polish love," said Boris, yawning discreetly, "Polish love is
something infinitely delicate. It needs no more than a movement or a
word to change it so that there can be no talk of love any more,
but--well, heavens--of anything else." Boris raised himself up a
little, closed his big eyes to tiny slits, and looked dreamily over
toward the forest, which drew a very black line through all the
brightness over yonder. "There was once a very beautiful woman. She was
a neighbor of ours. I was on very good terms with her. She was
accustomed to expect me at ten o'clock at night in her park. So far
good. Once I was late, and instead of ten it had got to be a quarter of
eleven. So when I got there and saw she was standing under a tree and
had waited for me after all, I was glad, and at that moment I really
loved her very much. But when I came closer she put on a severe
expression and said, 'Well, you are punctual, I must say, and it is
very chivalrous, too, to keep a lady waiting so long.' That sounded so
pointed and tart and common, that there was no love left at all. 'A
governess talking to a belated pupil,' I thought."

"What did you do?" asked Moritz.

"I made a bow and said, 'Madam, I only came to inform you that I shall
not come today.' Well, and then I went."

Moritz shrugged his shoulders: "I don't see anything wonderful in
that. That is the sort of thing you experience in order to tell about
it afterward."

"You experience nothing and you tell nothing," concluded Boris, and he
laid his head down on the grass again and pulled his hat over his eyes.

The two young men were silent; Boris seemed to be sleeping, Moritz sat
leaning up against the trunk of the willow and looked out upon the
plain, over which a uniform hum could be heard, the profoundly
reassured activity of a sunny work-day. This made him sad and
discouraged. He had a disagreeably distinct feeling that he himself was
uninteresting and commonplace. The girls fell in love with others,
unusual experiences existed for others; and even his sleek, pale-blond
hair, his round face, his light-blue eyes seemed to cause him woe. And
suddenly a very remote recollection came to him. He must have been a
very small child as he sat with his nurse in the sunny garden-corner,
yonder on the West Prussian estate. The old woman was asleep, her lean
face reddened by the heat, and the air was full of a uniform, sleepy