Gradually the moonlight lost in brightness, and a gray luminosity mingled with it and displaced it, a light which looked as if it were coming through dusty window-panes.
"The morning is coming," said Billy seriously, "come, let us go."
"Where to?" asked Marion.
"We'll wait for the sun," decided Billy.
The two girls went to the end of the garden, where the meadow begins, and sat down on a bench. They were a trifle pale and shivered as they huddled together, but Billy sat quite erect none the less, her eyes large and wakeful, her lips as if ready for an excited smile. She still felt all the grateful solemnity of that sadness, which was after all wonderfully beautiful. The mists on the meadow became transparent, the sky turned almost white, a magpie began to chatter in the thicket, and a crow flew through the glassy twilight, very black and heavy. A dream-world, and Billy felt that surrender which we have in dreams, for dreams give us all possible miracles even without our aid. Then came color, a string of rose-red cloudlets laid themselves on the sky, over the black tops of the forest trees there came a shower of red, and then suddenly everything was full of the commotion of a purple and golden light. "Ah, there it is," said Billy, and the two girls stared motionless and as if stupefied at the rising sun. But as the sun rose higher, and the colors all drowned in the uniform yellow light, Billy's face again grew serious and lined with care, for here was another day with its responsibilities and decisions. "Come," said Billy to 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 awfully weird."
"Of course it was weird," remarked Billy, and she leaned back among her pillows and prepared to open and read her letter.