“What is the matter?” asked the Wanderer, watching her in surprise.

She did not answer.  He rose and stood beside her, and lightly touched her hand.

“Are you ill?” he asked again.

She pushed him away, almost roughly.

“No,” she answered shortly.

Then, all at once, as though repenting of her gesture, her hand sought his again, pressed it hard for a moment, and let it fall.

“It is nothing,” she said.  “It will pass.  Forgive me.”

“Did anything I said——­” he began.

“No, no; how absurd!”

“Shall I go.  Yes, you would rather be alone——­” he hesitated.

“No—­yes—­yes, go away and come back later.  It is the heat perhaps; is it not hot here?”

“I daresay,” he answered absently.

He took her hand and then left her, wondering exceedingly over a matter which was of the simplest.

It was some time before Unorna realised that he was gone.  She had suffered a severe shock, not to be explained by any word or words which he had spoken, as much as by the revelation of her own utter powerlessness, of her total failure to touch his heart, but most directly of all the consequence of a sincere passion which was assuming dangerous proportions and which threatened to sweep away even her pride in its irresistible course.

She grew calmer when she found herself alone, but in a manner she grew also more desperate.  A resolution began to form itself in her mind which she would have despised and driven out of her thoughts a few hours earlier; a resolution destined to lead to strange results.  She began to think of resorting once more to a means other than natural in order to influence the man she loved.

In the first moments she had felt sure of herself, and the certainty that the Wanderer had forgotten Beatrice as completely as though she had never existed had seemed to Unorna a complete triumph.  With little or no common vanity she had nevertheless felt sure that the man must love her for her own sake.  She knew, when she thought of it, that she was beautiful, unlike other women, and born to charm all living things.  She compared in her mind the powers she controlled at will, and the influence she exercised without effort over every one who came near her.  It had always seemed to her enough to wish in order to see the realisation of her wishes.  But she had herself never understood how closely the wish was allied with the despotic power of suggestion which she possessed.  But in her love she had put a watch over her mysterious strength and had controlled it, saying that she would be loved for herself or not at all.  She had been jealous of every glance, lest it should produce a result not natural.  She had waited to be won, instead of trying to win.  She had failed, and passion could be restrained no longer.

“What does it matter how, if only he is mine!” she exclaimed fiercely, as she rose from her carved chair an hour after he had left her.