Marion, and they again crept into the house and up into her room.

"Shall we sleep now?" asked Marion.

"How can you think of it?" replied Billy; "at twelve you must be at the
linden. Come sit down beside me." She pulled up a chair for Marion; she
herself climbed into bed, but sat up, leaning against the pillows. So
the two children sat together; their eyes closed at times and then they
slept, but as we doze in the train, constantly starting up again in
fear of missing something. In the course of the morning Countess Betty
knocked twice at the door, but she was not admitted. "No, no, we are
sleeping," was the word. When Lina the chambermaid came, she was given
the order for breakfast. "A whole lot," said Billy, "tea and eggs, ham,
and bread, and a whole lot, do you hear?" She had a veritable
traveler's appetite.

Soon Billy became very restless. She kept asking Marion over and over
if it were not time, and it was only eleven o'clock when Marion was
compelled to go down to the linden. Billy sat quietly in her bed with
burning cheeks and folded hands, intent upon the strange tension of the
spirit within her. Yes, it was all there, her powerful desire for
Boris, the painful emotion at the thought of him, the courage for all
possibilities, and the fear of what now must come. But again and again
she felt the strangest alienation from the Billy who was feeling and
experiencing all this. The familiar noises of the house reached her;
down in the garden the twins were laughing, in the corridor Madame
Bonnechose was scolding a maid, and at the open window of the lower
story Lohmann was singing a hymn. But the Billy of the unhappy love,
who was resolved not to obey her father, who had to decide, she
belonged no more to this long-familiar life. But where was Marion?
Billy raised her bare arms high above her head, wrung her hands, and
groaned, "Oh dear, why doesn't she come!" At last steps came softly
running down the corridor, and Marion appeared, heated and breathless.
The two girls said nothing; Marion mutely handed Billy a letter, sat
down, and stared anxiously at her. Billy had become quite calm, and now
held the letter in her hand without opening it. "How was it?" she
asked.

"There by the linden," reported Marion in a low voice, "a little Jewish
boy was standing. He had very large black eyes, two tightly twisted
black curls hung down over his ears, and he wore a long coat like a
grown man; he brought the letter. It was a