"Oh, Boris, why do you talk so," said Billy in a voice hoarse with emotion, "we people here, all of us, like you."
Boris shrugged his shoulders. "All of us, good heavens, as if I cared about that. But you, Billy, I know you are good, you are for me,--but no, not as I understand it. Look, we Poles, all of us going about with a wound in our hearts, understand love differently. We demand a love which will take our side unconditionally, without a question, without looking around, which is wholly, wholly, wholly for us. But," and Boris made a gesture as if he were casting a world from him, "but, where do we find such a love?"
The sun was now hanging above the fringe of forest, a raspberry-red disk. Billy stood still and looked wide-eyed at the sun. The dark blue of those eyes became bright with tears, and two tiny red suns were reflected in them.
"Oh, Boris, why must you talk so," she struggled to say, "of course you know--what shall I do, what can I do?"
"You can do everything," retorted Boris mysteriously.
Billy's heart swelled painfully with vast compassion for the handsome pale lad before her, and it really seemed to her at this moment as if she could do anything and everything for him.
The garden was now quite red with the light of evening. Everywhere the young girls and men were standing together, excited by the violent, many-colored light as by a festal illumination. Egon von Hohenlicht was making the professor's daughters laugh, always simultaneously. Moritz was walking about with Marion between the beds of stocks, and they were speaking of Billy. Even little Miss Demme and the stately Hanoverian were standing together a little to one side and whispering. Lisa had had the reclining chair carried out to the grass-plot under the pear-tree. There she lay motionless, as if she feared a movement might disarrange the lovely ruddy light that floated over her. Lieutenant von Rabitow had stretched out on the turf at her feet.
"Oh, how beautiful that is," said Lisa with a softly plaintive melody in her voice, "seeing it thus, one would not believe that there is so much pain on this earth too."
"Quite right," remarked the lieutenant, "but we must not think of that. When I have taken my bath in the evening and finished my toilet, and go down into the street,--the restaurants are prettily lighted, and when I turn a corner sharply I bump into dear little giggling girls, and then I reflect a little and ask myself where I am going--why, then I drive out of my own head the thought of being on duty tomorrow, with recruits, et cetera."
"I believe you are happy, Lieutenant von Rabitow," said Lisa softly.