oked so unapproachably angry, as if he were looking down at something
he despised there outside the window.

"Well?" he said again.

"She has told Marion about it," began Countess Betty, and she narrated
in a low, faltering voice, with something queerly helpless in it. "The
poor child," she finished, "all alone in the night, what she suffered,
the wicked fellow! What do you say, Hamilcar?"

"I?" he said, turning toward his sister. His words issued now with
extreme clearness, sharp and nasal. "I say, Betty: What sort of beings
are we rearing here?--why, they cannot live. Why, we simply cannot
intrust to them the thing that we call life. A housemaid who steals out
to the stable-boy and lets him seduce her knows what she is after; but
what we are bringing up is little intoxicated ghosts that tremble with
longing to haunt the outside world and cannot breathe when they get out
there. That is what we are rearing, Betty."

"I do not understand you, Hamilcar," said the old lady, who had grown
quite pale, "she is a child, she does not know, she will forget, the
others will forget, everything will come out all right. God has
shielded her."

A faint flush rose into the count's pale face, and a powerful agitation
made him a trifle breathless: "Our interesting gentleman
has seen to it that she will not forget it, he has seen to it
that this ridiculous tragedy will cling to the girl like an ugly
sickness. He has deemed it proper to shoot himself yonder in the Jew's
tavern--here."

He held out to his sister a piece of paper which he had been holding in
his fist all the time, and which he had crumpled into a little round
ball. Countess Betty took this little ball; mechanically she unfolded
the paper with trembling fingers, smoothed it out, and tried to read.
There were a few lines from Ladislas Worsky announcing Boris's death.
Inclosed was a little slip on which Boris had written, "To Billy. Then
I shall go alone. Boris."

Countess Betty let the paper drop on her knee and looked into space
vacantly, almost blankly, and only when the count now burst into an
angry laugh did she start up in terrible affright.

"That is a departure for you, eh?" he said, and now he spoke quickly
and pantingly: "These are the people that spend their lives in standing
like actors before the mirror and practising gestures for their
audience. I love--how does that become me? I am unhappy, I die--how
does that look, what will the others say to that? D