In a manner familiar to Orientals the unhappy man laid one finger upon his own breast, and with the other hand pointed at Unorna’s fair young face.  The Wanderer’s eyes obeyed the guiding gesture, and he looked from one to the other, and again the belief crossed his thoughts that there was less of madness about Israel Kafka than Keyork would have had him think.  Trying to read the truth from Unorna’s eyes, he saw that they avoided his, and he fancied he detected symptoms of distress in her pallor and contracted lips.  And yet he argued that if it were all true she would silence the speaker, and that the only reason for her patience must be sought in her willingness to humour the diseased brain in its wanderings.  In either case he pitied Israel Kafka profoundly, and his compassion increased from one moment to another.

“I loved her.  There is a history in those three words which neither the eloquent tongue nor the skilled pen can tell.  See how coldly I speak.  I command my speech, I may pick and choose among ten thousand words and phrases, and describe love at my leisure.  She grants me time; she is very merciful to-day.  What would you have me say?  You know what love is.  Think of such love as yours can have been, and take twice that, and three times over, and a hundred thousand times, and cram it, burning, flaming, melting into your bursting heart—­then you would know a tenth of what I have known.  Love, indeed!  Who can have known love but me?  I stand alone.  Since the dull, unlovely world first jarred and trembled and began to move, there has not been another of my kind, nor has man suffered as I have suffered, and been crushed and torn and thrown aside to die, without even the mercy of a death-wound.  Describe it?  Tell it?  Look at me!  I am both love’s description and the epitaph on his gravestone.  In me he lived, me he tortured, with me he dies never to live again as he has lived this once.  There is no justice and no mercy!  Think not that it is enough to love and that you will be loved in return.  Do not think that—­do not dream that.  Do you not know that the fiercest drought is as a spring rain to the rocks, which thirst not and need no refreshment?”

Again he fixed his eyes on Unorna’s face and faintly smiled.  Apparently she was displeased.

“What is it that you would say?” she asked coldly.  “What is this that you tell us of rocks and rain, and death-wounds, and the rest?  You say you loved me once—­that was a madness.  You say that I never loved you—­that, at least, is truth.  Is that your story?  It is indeed short enough, and I marvel at the many words in which you have put so little!”

She laughed in a hard tone.  But Israel Kafka’s eyes grew dark and the sombre fire beamed in them as he spoke again.  The weary, tortured smile left his wan lips, and his pale face grew stern.

“Laugh, laugh, Unorna!” he cried.  “You do not laugh alone.  And yet—­I love you still, I love you so well in spite of all that I cannot laugh at you as I would, even though I were to see you again clinging to the rock and imploring it to take pity on your thirst.  And he who dies for you, Unorna—­of him you ask nothing, save that he will crawl away and die alone, and not disturb your delicate life with such an unseemly sight.”