"Yes," said Boris with his lyrical inflection, "he who is not yet done with his life has much to think over."
Moritz laughed scornfully: "H'mp, you've managed to crowd a good lot into yours already."
"Oh, I've hardly begun yet," said Boris sleepily.
Moritz now reflected as to what he could say, then he began, "Tell me, how was that affair in Warsaw with the dancer Zucchetti? Didn't you have a liaison with her?"
But Boris was not vexed. "How was it? Why, how should I know that now. You don't remember things like that. You might just as well ask me about the bottle of champagne I drank on the twelfth of August three years ago. I don't know." And comfortably, as if he were lying in bed, he turned over on his stomach in the grass, to let the sun warm his back.
"All right," Moritz continued obstinately. "But you did enough crazy things on her account, so you must have loved her."
"If you call that love in German," responded Boris, "then I am sorry for your poor German language."
"Is that so?" Moritz was provoked. "Then what is Polish love?"
"Polish love," said Boris, yawning discreetly, "Polish love is something infinitely delicate. It needs no more than a movement or a word to change it so that there can be no talk of love any more, but--well, heavens--of anything else." Boris raised himself up a little, closed his big eyes to tiny slits, and looked dreamily over toward the forest, which drew a very black line through all the brightness over yonder. "There was once a very beautiful woman. She was a neighbor of ours. I was on very good terms with her. She was accustomed to expect me at ten o'clock at night in her park. So far good. Once I was late, and instead of ten it had got to be a quarter of eleven. So when I got there and saw she was standing under a tree and had waited for me after all, I was glad, and at that moment I really loved her very much. But when I came closer she put on a severe expression and said, 'Well, you are punctual, I must say, and it is very chivalrous, too, to keep a lady waiting so long.' That sounded so pointed and tart and common, that there was no love left at all. 'A governess talking to a belated pupil,' I thought."
"What did you do?" asked Moritz.