Boris's voice again took on a tortured accent as he replied, "Why--I don't know, don't ask me now--of course there's nothing else for you to do, everything will come out all right, but now we won't think at all. This is what I have longed for, this is what I had to have--I should have died if I had not had it--to sit here like this with you, close, close, and about us it is all quite dark and black; everything is gone, is blotted out, the stupid world beats on the carriage and cannot get in, and you and I are quite alone and have nothing to do but to be together. Do you feel that? Tell me." And again he pressed her tightly to him and shook her slightly.
"Yes, I think so," answered Billy, "but talk some more, talk some more like that."
"Why, what is our whole life for," pursued Boris, "but for such moments as these, when we can forget everything. Isn't it this for which we toil, for which we humble ourselves and borrow money, so that for a short time all burdens drop from us and we feel one thing and think one thing: Billy!" He kissed her very firmly on the lips. "You feel, don't you, everything dropping from you and becoming quite pale and unsubstantial, the tiresome garden at home, and Joseph with the dinner-bell, and the tea with bread and butter, and that Billy in the white dress, who could do nothing and have no thoughts? All that is unreal? and there is only one reality, and that is I. Tell me, do you feel that?"
Billy leaned her head against Boris's shoulder and closed her eyes. Certainly, all that was very far away, the garden, her room with the drawn curtains, the sleeping Marion, the old familiar voices of the clocks in the quiet rooms--all strange and unreal, as if it did not belong to her. But the carriage here with its cramped space and its darkness, the rushing of the rain, the rattle of the windowpanes, were they real? were the hands real that seized, pressed, and shook her as if she no longer belonged to herself, as if she belonged to another, the lips which were hotly pressed to hers, and this voice which spoke softly and passionately into the darkness? And she herself, who was she, with a body and a blood in which a strange fever was venturing forth. She felt the Billy that she had known and believed in melting away within her, and it seemed as if something which had heretofore held her were releasing her, and now she was drifting along and everything was immaterial, for after all that did not belong to her, that burning and fever which it was now her sole business to attend to and obey. Now they were both silent. The rain seemed to be growing heavier, and with ever increasing frequency the hasty light of the lightning flashes flickered across the black forest. The carriage only progressed with difficulty, shaking and rocking. A great weariness made Billy's limbs heavy, as if they did not belong to her, and imperceptibly she passed over into a dream-state, into that torturing somnolescence of first sleep in which the dream-figures approach us so importunately. It was the face of her father that suddenly rose before Billy, close before her, so close that the long white nose touched Billy's nose like something cold, and in the stern iron-gray eyes little golden points were moving, as always when he was angry. And she heard him speak in the calm, slightly nasal voice: "Yes, if this striking out were always possible," he was saying. A loud peal of thunder made Billy start up; she did not know where she was, only something heavy and sad was burdening her. She was cold. Boris too had been startled awake beside her, and as if in fear he put out his hand toward her.
"We have been sleeping," he said, "no, we can't do that, for if we do all sorts of things will come back, and above all the morning will come--that cursed light, how that creeps up on us." They huddled together shivering. "It ought never to be day again, we ought to die now, oughtn't we?--in a lightning flash: suddenly a powerful blue radiance and then again this lovely warm darkness."
Suddenly the carriage stopped. Boris let down the window and stuck out his head. Through the falling streams of rain a yellow light blinked; a dog barked furiously. "What is up?" cried Boris. Then he impatiently opened the carriage door and jumped out. Billy heard him talking excitedly; a growling male voice answered him, then another voice interposed, high and strident, with the amused ring of social intercourse, as if a gentleman were laughing at his own joke in the midst of a quadrille. Billy, left alone, was frightened, afraid of the darkness, of the voices outside, of what would happen and what she had done--the simple, painful fear of the little girl with a bad conscience. Boris opened the carriage door again. "Come," said he, "we must get out, this fellow refuses to drive farther; they say the road is impossible, a bridge is smashed, and I don't know what all." He helped Billy out of the carriage and led her through the puddles of water up some rickety steps.
"Careful, everything is rotten here." Again the high, strident voice was speaking.
They entered a hall which smelled of smoke and onions, and thence a living-room in which they were met by heavy, over-heated air. It was light here, for two candles were burning on a table with a white cloth, and at one side over a small bar hung a smoking kerosene lamp. Billy blinked blindly at the light; the room seemed to be full of people. Some one took off her cloak, and the strident voice said, "Your eyes must first become accustomed to the splendor of Wolf's salon, Countess."
"Sit down, sit down," cried Boris, and thrust her across to the great black sofa which stood before the covered table.
Now Billy began to distinguish the figures in the room. There was a tall Jew with a black beard and flaming brown eyes; he was smiling quite sweetly. Children in their shirts crowded into the half-open door, and very large eyes, dark as balls of onyx, looked fixedly over at Billy from under tangled black hair. Behind the counter sat a Jewess, the false wig of red-brown hair pulled a little too far down on her forehead; her yellow, regular face and elongated brown eyes expressed a rigid, proud patience. Beside Boris stood a gentleman in riding-dress, wearing spurs on his boots; his fine, sharp-cut face was laughing, showing very white teeth under a small moustache, which sat on his upper lip like two inky black commas.