"Oh," said Moritz ironically, "so you think the lake will be becoming to you."
"Yes, it probably will," said Boris, beginning to undress. "I suppose you swim very well?"
"Pretty well, and you?"
"I enjoy it very much," Boris informed him, "but it excites me; I haven't the feeling that the water is friendly to me."
"That means in German that you swim poorly," Moritz dryly remarked.
Boris laughed: "Your German is particularly good."
The water was lukewarm. It's like burying yourself in warm milk, thought Moritz, as he swam slowly into the flickering light. All sadness, all "these imbecilities" were gone, only a strong, quiet feeling of life warmed his limbs. He turned over on his back, wishing to let himself be deliriously and lazily rocked by the water, like the ducks. The dragon-flies lit on his breast, water-plants tickled his flesh as with small wet fingers, over him flapped gulls with wings of pale gray, and they looked down upon him and cried shrill notes at him, which sounded like the laughter of the professor's two daughters. "Billy, Billy," he murmured. Now he could say it without pain, it was only the expression of deepest contentment. Then he thought of Boris, and raised his head a little. The devil, was the fellow crazy, to swim out so far. Boris's head popped up over yonder between the spangles of sunlight like a dark speck, but it was not advancing; now it had disappeared, now it was there again. With vigorous strokes Moritz began to swim to the spot, and got there just in time to catch Boris by the arm; enmeshed in a net of water-lilies and water-plantains, he was just rising again, his eyes weirdly wide and black in his bluish face. Moritz towed him away, and when he got to standing depth he took him in his arms to conduct him to the shore. He spoke kindly to him:
Water swallowed, my boy, yes, that's the dickens when you get into that mess yonder. Wait, we'll be on dry land directly."
Boris spat out the water and struggled for breath. Once on shore, he lay down in the grass; he felt a deadly exhaustion and closed his eyes. Moritz sat beside him and looked at him. Suddenly Boris raised himself up, threw his arms about his knees, and his strangely dark eyes, still wide with fear, looked straight ahead of him.
"Sleep, why don't you?" said Moritz kindly.