ikes to let his eyes
rest a long time upon objects. On the other grass-plot Lisa was lying
in her reclining chair, and Madame Bonnechose sat beside her, knitting
a red child's stocking. Countess Betty and Marion never stopped running
along between the rows of dahlias to and from the house and the
grass-plots. Count Hamilcar was taking his afternoon stroll. He walked
slowly down the garden-path, leaning heavily on his cane; from time to
time he stopped, sniffed the scent of the ripe fruit, the flowers, and
the fading leaves, and put on a stern, angry face, for he was indeed
vexed. Here lay these two beautiful creatures now, blighted by life,
crumpled up, attacked from ambush. Why? Why this barbarity? Why this
waste? He drew up his gray eyebrows discontentedly and blinked out at
the fringe of forest which lay far away in a violet haze. Was it not
perhaps a misunderstanding, his misunderstanding, this charming culture
that he had carefully erected like a fence about himself and his dear
ones? Could one learn how to live here? As he passed Lisa, he heard her
say in her elegiac fashion,

"I do not believe that Billy can understand a great pain, or that she
can enjoy it, for we must be able to enjoy even our pain."

"Enjoy, _ma chere, quelle idee_," said Madame Bonnechose, without
looking up from her knitting.

The count passed on and came to a stop before Billy. "Well, how are
you?" he asked a little sternly.

Billy flushed. "Thank you, papa, well. I wanted to tell you something."

"Oh, you did." The count sat down on a garden-chair facing his daughter
and looked attentively at her.

"I wanted to ask you," began Billy, looking up into the pear-tree, "I
wanted to ask you if you have forgiven me."

"Yes, certainly," the count slowly replied, as if he had been given a
problem to solve. "When we pardon some one, we wish by doing so to help
him get over something he has experienced or done. In this case, of
course, that is my liveliest wish."

Billy leaned her head back satisfied, and gently moved it to and fro on
her pillow as fever-patients are wont to do. "When we are sick," she
said, "time goes faster, I think; what went before the sickness lies so
far away. It seems to me as if I had done so much during this time of
sickness, and especially I have walked a great deal, always walking,
always on the way, and always such wonderfully strange roads. I don't
remember much of it all, I only know one thing: I was walking al