ope, that is through an eye which was not
intended for me, and find that it then looks very different. Look, a
shooting-star. When the Lithuanians see a shooting-star, they say,
'Some one is going to see his girl.' Certainly, at this moment that
shooting-star is for me somebody going to see his girl. That is my
'experience.' But, if you please, tomorrow I shall assuredly strike it
out and think of asteroids or such things; but that doesn't prevent it
for today from being for me some one going to see his girl, if you
please."

All had looked up at the sky and seen the star, which glided hurriedly
through the darkness, passing other stars in a wide curve, as if trying
to shun them, hastily and secretly.

"That striking out," remarked Count Hamilcar, "if we could only do it
just when we wished."

Billy was still looking up at the stars. That about the star going to
see his girl had suddenly restored to her the whole joyful impatience
of her love-affair, and she felt as if she were one of that great
secret company of those who are hastening here on earth silently and
hurriedly through the night to meet their beloved.

Upstairs in her room Billy kissed Marion and said, "Tonight let us
sleep, and sleep soundly. But Marion, don't look so at me, as if I had
died."

Marion tried to say something, but then stole anxiously and in
silence from the room.

"Lina," Betty directed the chambermaid, "tomorrow I wish to sleep late,
and no one, do you hear?--no one must disturb me."

Left alone, she began to walk up and down quietly and busily. She
changed her clothes, putting on a brown cloth dress, put on her hat,
wrapped herself in her rain-coat, took her umbrella, wrote on a slip of
paper "I am with him" and laid it on her dressing-table, and then sat
there like a traveler in a station waiting for her train. Outside it
thundered at intervals. Downstairs in the sleeping house the old
familiar voices of the clocks called to each other through the silent
rooms.

Billy softly descended into the garden by way of the back stairs. Heavy
clouds hung in the sky. Tonight the whole world was full of voices and
sounds; a gust struck the trees and made them murmur with excitement.
Withered leaves chased with a rustle along the path before Billy.
Somewhere a window-shutter creaked, a branch groaned. It was as if an
Event were straying through the gloom and waking the sleeping garden.
Billy went very quickly, as quickly as in her childhood