"Yes," answered Moritz crossly.
"That is nice," said Billy. She sat down on the bench beside him and leaned slightly against his arm. "Do you still love me?"
"Yes," said Moritz in the same cross tone, "but why should that matter to you?"
"Oh," said Billy plaintively, "it is very important, for I feel as if I had died, and when a person is very much loved, then ... then I think he comes to life again."
Moritz was silent a moment, and when he began to speak a great agitation made his voice hesitant and awkward. "Oh Billy, if I could help you."
"How can you, Moritz?" answered Billy, and he could hear from her voice that she was weeping. "I--I--am longing so terribly for Boris." The arm against which Billy was leaning trembled slightly; it was as if its muscles tightened.
"That--" hissed Moritz between clenched teeth, "you must not think of him ... how could he do that to you ... he had no right to die ... and not die that way, even if life had been twice as loathsome to him ... a man who loves doesn't do such a thing; that was base."
For a moment it grew quite still. Moritz merely felt the girlish body lean a little more heavily on him. At last Billy began, and it sounded like the faint wail of a child: "Is he dead?"
"What, Billy, you didn't know--"
"Yes I did, I knew it, I feel now that I knew it all the time--and even over there when I came away from him." She was silent a while, and it grew so still that they heard the night-dew trickling through the leaves. Suddenly Billy raised herself, stood before Moritz white and erect, brushed the hair from her forehead, while the moonlight rested on her face, which seemed queerly pale and calm, and said in almost a matter-of-fact tone, "Will you come along, Moritz?"