began to laugh softly and long. "'Cause it's Sunday. Ah
yes, when we go walking by night we don't know what day it is any more,
but that's the way with girls; Lina's got that far too."

"Can't he marry her?" asked Billy timidly.

The old man struck angrily at his white horse. "Marry? Marry who? Where
is the man to marry? Where is our handsome machinist at the
saw-mill? 'Cause he's got yellow cat's-eyes, they all run after him.
Anna at the watermill has come to it too now. Ye-ep, you can't stop it;
soon as spring comes, the young hussies are out o' nights, as restless
as the bees before a thunderstorm, and you can beat 'em, you can tie
'em, but in a jiffy--off they put. Now at this time o' year it don't
happen so often," added the old man with a sidelong glance at Billy.

She smiled. "Yes," she thought, "in a spring night, when we grow as
restless as the bees before a thunderstorm, then maybe there is this
Being-happy and this Dying, that Boris was talking about, but
there"--she shrank and shuddered: she did not even wish to think of it,
she still had a long ride before her, and later she would think it all
over. Good, good, but no thinking now, just listen to the sleepy tinkle
of the little bells.

Gradually however the region became more familiar, here and there stood
a farmer in Sunday coat among his fields, whose face Billy recalled,
and finally Kadullen rose in the distance between the great trees of
the park; a cool green spot in the sun-yellow land.

Billy drew herself up; she suddenly became quite wakeful; it was
almost torturing, how abruptly all her dream world fell away from her
and the former Billy was present once more with the responsibility for
what she had done, with the fear and shame before all those people
yonder. She saw distinctly Marion's eyes, Aunt Betty's helpless little
face, and her father's severe white nose. They had probably found the
slip of paper she had left behind. She tried to think what was on it.
"I am with him." Lord, how stupid that sounded! And now they were
coming closer and closer to the house. If only she could get to her
room unnoticed by way of the little staircase: no one would recognize
her in Lina's clothes, and once upstairs in her room she would lock the
door and let nobody in and sleep--sleep. Perhaps that would take some
burden from her; perhaps when she then awoke everything would be
different, everything better.

"Oh please," she said, "we'll stop at the little