"Yes, I think so," answered Billy, "but talk some more, talk some more like that." "Why, what is our whole life for," pursued Boris, "but for such moments as these, when we can forget everything. Isn't it this for which we toil, for which we humble ourselves and borrow money, so that for a short time all burdens drop from us and we feel one thing and think one thing: Billy!" He kissed her very firmly on the lips. "You feel, don't you, everything dropping from you and becoming quite pale and unsubstantial, the tiresome garden at home, and Joseph with the dinner-bell, and the tea with bread and butter, and that Billy in the white dress, who could do nothing and have no thoughts? All that is unreal? and there is only one reality, and that is I. Tell me, do you feel that?" Billy leaned her head against Boris's shoulder and closed her eyes. Certainly, all that was very far away, the garden, her room with the drawn curtains, the sleeping Marion, the old familiar voices of the clocks in the quiet rooms--all strange and unreal, as if it did not belong to her. But the carriage here with its cramped space and its darkness, the rushing of the rain, the rattle of the windowpanes, were they real? were the hands real that seized, pressed, and shook her as if she no longer belonged to herself, as if she belonged to another, the lips which were hotly pressed to hers, and this voice which spoke softly and passionately into the darkness? And she herself, who was she, with a body and a blood in which a strange fever was venturing forth. She felt the Billy that she had known and believed in melting away within her, and it seemed as if something which had heretofore held her were releasing her, and now she was drifting along and everything was immaterial, for after all that did not belong to her, that burning and fever which it was now her sole business to attend to and obey. Now they were both silent. The rain seemed to be growing heavier, and with ever increasing frequency the hasty light of the lightning flashes flickered across the black forest. The carriage only progressed with difficulty, shaking and rocking. A great weariness made Billy's limbs heavy, as if they did not belong to her, and imperceptibly she passed over into a dream-state, into that torturing somnolescence of first sleep in which the dream-figures approach us so importunately. It was the face of her father that suddenly rose before Billy, close before her, so close that the long white nose touched Billy's nose like something cold, and in the stern iron-gray eyes little golden points were moving, as always when he was angry. And she heard him speak in the calm, slightly nasal voice: "Yes, if this striking out were always possible," he was saying. A loud peal of thunder made Billy start up; she did not know where she was, only something heavy and sad was burdening her. She was cold. Boris too had been startled awake beside her, and as if in fear he put out his hand toward her.