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"Yes," she said, "I was mad. You cannot understand it. I daresay you cannot even understand how I can speak of it now, and yet I cannot help speaking." Her manner was more natural and quiet than it had been since the moment of Kafka's appearance in the cemetery. The Wanderer noticed the tone.
"It is so much or has been so much in all these years, when I had nothing but your name to love." "Will you not do it? It is all I ask." "Indeed I will, if you would rather have it so. Do you think there is anything that I would not do if you asked it of me?" They were almost the words she had spoken to him that night when they were watching together by Israel Kafka's side.
The hectic flush of passion sank from Israel Kafka's cheek. Rigid, with outstretched arms and bent head, he stood against the ancient gravestone. Above him, as though raised to heaven in silent supplication, were the sculptured hands that marked the last resting-place of a Kohn. "You shall know now," said Unorna. "You shall suffer indeed."
He imagined that the Wanderer had gone and that Unorna, being freed from his restraint, was about to enter the place again. The door opened and the three men came in. Kafka's first idea, on seeing himself disappointed, was that they had come to take him into custody, and his first impulse was to elude them.
They would constitute a tangible proof of the journey's reality in case the suggestion proved less thoroughly successful than was hoped, and Keyork prided himself upon this supreme touch. "And now," he said, taking Kafka's hand, "I would advise you to rest as long as you can. I suppose that it must have been a fatiguing trip for you, though I myself am as fresh as a May morning.
As a matter of fact the conversation was what was most clearly impressed upon Kafka's mind, as he recalled the rapid passage from one city to another, and realised how many places he had visited in one short month.
Last of all the Individual, who had divested himself of his outer coat and whose powerful proportions did not escape Israel Kafka's observation. It was clear that if there were a struggle it could have but one issue. Kafka would be overpowered. His knowledge of the disposition of the plants and trees offered him a hope of escape.
Going to Kafka's side he took him by the wrist of the hand which held the knife. But Kafka still clutched it firmly. "You had better give it up," he said. Kafka shook his head angrily and set his teeth, but the Wanderer unclasped the fingers by quiet force and took the weapon away.
He would have been very much disconcerted had he known that the latter had long been aware of Unorna's love, and was quite able to guess at the cause of Kafka's sudden appearance and extreme excitement.
It might be possible, indeed, for Unorna to produce forgetfulness of such a dream as she impressed upon Kafka's mind in the cemetery that same afternoon, or even, perhaps, of some real circumstance of merely relative importance in a man's life; but the Wanderer could not believe that it was in her power to destroy the memory of the great passion through which she pretended that he himself had passed.
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