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Updated: June 11, 2025
"Small wonder, when my life is in the balance." "Your life?" She uttered the question incredulously, but not without curiosity. "My life and for your word," he answered, earnestly. He spoke so impressively, and in so solemn a tone, that Unorna's face became grave. She advanced another step towards him, and laid her hand upon the back of the chair in which she previously had sat.
It was not yet noon, but it might have been early morning in a southern island, so soft was the light, so freshly scented the air, so peaceful the tinkle of the tiny fountain. Unorna's expression was sad, as she gazed in silence at the man she loved.
"As upon an instrument," said the little man, quoting Unorna's angry speech. "Truly I can play upon you, but it is a strange music." Half an hour later Unorna returned to her place among the flowers, but Israel Kafka was gone.
The Wanderer had told his story with perfect truth and yet in a way which entirely concealed the very important part Unorna's passion for him had played in the sequence of events. Seeing that Keyork asked no further questions he felt satisfied that he had accomplished his purpose as he had intended, and that the sage suspected nothing.
Indeed, so soon as he had finished the short narrative, his mind reverted with curiosity to Keyork himself, and he wondered what the little man had meant by his amazing outburst of gratitude on hearing of Unorna's safety. Perhaps he loved her. More impossible things than that had occurred in the Wanderer's experience.
I am not young enough nor foolish enough either, to propose that we should swear eternal brother-and-sisterhood or perhaps I am not old enough, who can tell? Yet I feel how perfectly safe it would be for either of us." The steel had been thrust home, and could go no farther. Unorna's unquiet temper rose at his quiet declaration of his absolute security.
Unorna's voice grew sad with each syllable. They had entered the great corridor in which their apartments were situated, and were approaching Beatrice's door. They walked more and more slowly, in silence during the last few moments, after Unorna had spoken. Unorna sighed. The passing breath traveling on the air of the lonely place seemed both to invite and to offer sympathy.
The Wanderer looked, and, as in dreams, he knew that what he saw was unreal, he knew that the changing walls and streets and houses and public places were built up of gravestones which in truth were deeply planted in the ground, immovable and incapable of spontaneous motion; he knew that the crowds of men and women were not human beings but gnarled and twisted trees rooted in the earth, and that the hum of voices which reached his ears was but the sound of dried branches bending in the wind; he knew that Israel Kafka was not the pale-faced boy who glided from place to place followed everywhere by a soft radiance; he knew that Unorna was the source and origin of the vision, and that the mingling speeches of the actors, now shrill in angry altercation, now hissing in low, fierce whisper, were really formed upon Unorna's lips and made audible through her tones, as the chorus of indistinct speech proceeded from the swaying trees.
She knew no more than Beatrice of Unorna's intention, but she believed in the existence of a Black Art, full of sacrilegious practices, and credited Unorna vaguely with the worst designs which she could think of, though in her goodness she was not able to imagine anything much worse than the saying of a Pater Noster backwards in a consecrated place.
As though suddenly released from a spell he sprang forward and knelt down, trying to revive the unconscious man by rubbing his hands and chafing his temples. The Wanderer glanced at Unorna's face and saw the expression of relentless hatred which had settled upon her features. He neither understood it nor attempted to account for it.
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