around?--after all it's my love-affair, not hers." But Aunt Betty's window next door was also lit up. And there was the shadow of Aunt Betty's big nightcap, too, and beside it another big nightcap. How the two nightcaps gently moved toward each other, swaying and quivering. Why weren't they sleeping, all of them? Was it on her account? And there on the other side, light there too, and behind the shades another shadow walking restlessly to and fro. Now the shadow approached the window, the shade was raised, the window opened, and Billy saw her father lean out: his hands tore open the shirt at his breast, and in the scanty moonlight his face seemed quite white, only the open mouth and eyes laying black shadows on it. So he stood there, drinking in the night air greedily and anxiously. Billy retreated behind the box-hedge. She was shivering with fear. Good heavens, what ailed them all! Was it not as if she had died and were now stealing about the house as a spirit, to see how all of them were mourning for her in there. Cautiously keeping to the shadows, she walked over to the avenue of maples. She felt impelled to look up from there at her balcony and the window of her room. On the bench facing her window some one was sitting asleep, his head drooping on his breast. It was Moritz. Billy stood still before him. The good lad, he had sat here and looked up at her window; the thought gave her the feeling of a delicious, warm shelter. Moritz grew restless, opened his eyes, and looked at her. "Ah, you, Billy," he said, as if he had expected her. Billy smiled at him. "Have you been sitting here, Moritz, to look up at my window?" "Yes," answered Moritz crossly. "That is nice," said Billy. She sat down on the bench beside him and leaned slightly against his arm. "Do you still love me?" "Yes," said Moritz in the same cross tone, "but why should that matter to you?" "Oh," said Billy plaintively, "it is very important, for I feel as if I had died, and when a person is very much loved, then ... then I think he comes to life again." Moritz was silent a moment, and when he began to speak a great agitation made his voice hesitant and awkward. "Oh Billy, if I could help you." "How can you, Moritz?" answered Billy, and he could hear from her voice that she was weeping. "I--I--am longing so terribly for Boris." The arm against which Billy was leaning trembled slightly; it was as if its muscles tightened. "That--" hissed Moritz between clenched teeth, "you must not think of him ... how could he do that to you ... he had no right to die ... and not die that way, even if life had been twice as loathsome to him ... a man who loves doesn't do such a thing; that was base." For a moment it grew quite still. Moritz merely felt the girlish body lean a little more heavily on him. At last Billy began, and it sounded like the faint wail of a child: "Is he dead?" "What, Billy, you didn't know--"