"Yes I did, I knew it, I feel now that I knew it all the time--and even over there when I came away from him." She was silent a while, and it grew so still that they heard the night-dew trickling through the leaves. Suddenly Billy raised herself, stood before Moritz white and erect, brushed the hair from her forehead, while the moonlight rested on her face, which seemed queerly pale and calm, and said in almost a matter-of-fact tone, "Will you come along, Moritz?" "Where to, Billy!" "I _must_ go to him, you can see that; I left him once before. He can't stay there alone in that terrible room. The Jewess is looking at him and the children are standing in the door. No, I will not forsake him again; but alone through the forest again--please, Moritz, come along." She swayed slightly, propped herself on Moritz's shoulder, and then sank down quietly and heavily before him.-- Billy had been sick for a long time. Now it was a sunny September afternoon, and she was for the first time permitted to go out into the garden. On the patch of turf under the pear-tree Billy sat wrapped in shawls, her face haggard and transparently pale, and in her eyes the lazily relishing glance of the convalescent, who likes to let his eyes rest a long time upon objects. On the other grass-plot Lisa was lying in her reclining chair, and Madame Bonnechose sat beside her, knitting a red child's stocking. Countess Betty and Marion never stopped running along between the rows of dahlias to and from the house and the grass-plots. Count Hamilcar was taking his afternoon stroll. He walked slowly down the garden-path, leaning heavily on his cane; from time to time he stopped, sniffed the scent of the ripe fruit, the flowers, and the fading leaves, and put on a stern, angry face, for he was indeed vexed. Here lay these two beautiful creatures now, blighted by life, crumpled up, attacked from ambush. Why? Why this barbarity? Why this waste? He drew up his gray eyebrows discontentedly and blinked out at the fringe of forest which lay far away in a violet haze. Was it not perhaps a misunderstanding, his misunderstanding, this charming culture that he had carefully erected like a fence about himself and his dear ones? Could one learn how to live here? As he passed Lisa, he heard her say in her elegiac fashion, "I do not believe that Billy can understand a great pain, or that she can enjoy it, for we must be able to enjoy even our pain." "Enjoy, _ma chère, quelle idée_," said Madame Bonnechose, without looking up from her knitting. The count passed on and came to a stop before Billy. "Well, how are you?" he asked a little sternly. Billy flushed. "Thank you, papa, well. I wanted to tell you something." "Oh, you did." The count sat down on a garden-chair facing his daughter and looked attentively at her. "I wanted to ask you," began Billy, looking up into the pear-tree, "I wanted to ask you if you have forgiven me."