"I made a bow and said, 'Madam, I only came to inform you that I shall not come today.' Well, and then I went." Moritz shrugged his shoulders: "I don't see anything wonderful in that. That is the sort of thing you experience in order to tell about it afterward." "You experience nothing and you tell nothing," concluded Boris, and he laid his head down on the grass again and pulled his hat over his eyes. The two young men were silent; Boris seemed to be sleeping, Moritz sat leaning up against the trunk of the willow and looked out upon the plain, over which a uniform hum could be heard, the profoundly reassured activity of a sunny work-day. This made him sad and discouraged. He had a disagreeably distinct feeling that he himself was uninteresting and commonplace. The girls fell in love with others, unusual experiences existed for others; and even his sleek, pale-blond hair, his round face, his light-blue eyes seemed to cause him woe. And suddenly a very remote recollection came to him. He must have been a very small child as he sat with his nurse in the sunny garden-corner, yonder on the West Prussian estate. The old woman was asleep, her lean face reddened by the heat, and the air was full of a uniform, sleepy sound. The great burdock leaves, heated by the sun, discharged a strong sourish odor, and the child felt it to be something that would never change. But beyond the fence, from below in the village, the laughter and cries of children reached him from time to time, the children who had experiences. Moritz started up. "Nonsense," he murmured, and he leaned forward and began to shake Boris. "Here, don't sleep." "What is it," asked Boris, "why this brutality?" "Come and take a swim," said Moritz. "Swim?" repeated Boris, opening his eyes and looking sharply and reflectively at Moritz, as if trying to read something in him. "All right, let's go swimming," he decided. The lake was very blue, and full of hard, gently swaying lights. Between the horse-willows and the club-reeds wild ducks floated motionless, like shining metal objects. "Pretty," said Boris; "to climb down into this bowl of color is rather smart, sure enough." "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."