"Yes, certainly," the count slowly replied, as if he had been given a problem to solve. "When we pardon some one, we wish by doing so to help him get over something he has experienced or done. In this case, of course, that is my liveliest wish." Billy leaned her head back satisfied, and gently moved it to and fro on her pillow as fever-patients are wont to do. "When we are sick," she said, "time goes faster, I think; what went before the sickness lies so far away. It seems to me as if I had done so much during this time of sickness, and especially I have walked a great deal, always walking, always on the way, and always such wonderfully strange roads. I don't remember much of it all, I only know one thing: I was walking along a yellow country road and ahead of me some one was walking, and somebody ahead of her, and so on; there were many figures, and they were all wearing my brown rain-coat and my muslin dress with the pink carnation figure, in fact they were all Billys, and I knew the point was for me to catch up with the Billy that was ahead of me. That seemed very important to me." "H'm," remarked the count, "an interesting dream. Those are our mirrored images that become emancipated in our dreams. And now," he smiled at his daughter, "now you think you have caught that other Billy." Billy still kept looking up at the pear-tree, and gently rocked her head. "Now I am quite happy," she said meditatively, "but perhaps I ought not to be. Lisa says that any one who has a great grief should stand before it like a soldier on guard." Count Hamilcar angrily thrust out his underlip and said sharply, "To stand before one's follies like a soldier on guard is certainly not commendable." Billy did not seem to hear him. She still kept on dreamily talking to the little golden-yellow pears that hung over her: "And to be faithless, to be faithless is so terribly villainous." The count bent forward, lifted his extended index finger in the sunshine, and said slowly and impressively, "My daughter, provision is made that we shall not be faithless, but remain true, to our sad or foolish experiences. They run after us in any case. Perhaps we are continually changing, and that is well. But the score always remains the same. To come back to your remarkable dream, when the one Billy has successfully caught the other Billy, you can be sure that the old Billy gives all the burdens she has had to carry to the new one to take with her. That is and must be so." "All--for ever," said Billy under her breath, and she looked at her father with a glance of such helpless fear that he dropped his eyes, for a keen compassion caused him almost physical pain. "Well, well," he rejoined, "when there are as many Billys as you have before you, there cannot fail to be many pleasant things to take along."