“There is least wit where there is most love, Unorna.  I take no account of the height of my folly when I see the depth of my love, which has swallowed up myself and all my life.  In the last hour I have known its depth and breadth and strength, for I have seen what it can bear.  And why should I complain of it?  Have I not many times said that I would die for you willingly—­and is it not dying for you to die of love for you?  To prove my faith it were too easy a death.  When I look into your face I know that there is in me the heart that made true Christian martyrs——­”

Unorna laughed.

“Would you be a martyr?” she asked.

“Nor for your Faith—­but for the faith I once had in you, and for the love that no martyrdom could kill.  Ay—­to prove that love I would die a hundred deaths—­and to gain yours I would die the death eternal.”

“And you would have deserved it.  Have you not deserved enough already, enough of martyrdom, for tracking me to-day, following me stealthily, like a thief and a spy, to find out my ends and my doings?”

“I love you, Unorna.”

“And therefore you suspect me of unimaginable evil—­and therefore you come out of your hiding-place and accuse me of things I have neither done nor thought of doing, building up falsehood upon lie, and lie upon falsehood in the attempt to ruin me in the eyes of one who has my friendship and who is my friend.  You are foolish to throw yourself upon my mercy, Israel Kafka.”

“Foolish?  Yes, and mad, too!  And my madness is all you have left me—­take it—­it is yours!  You cannot kill my love.  Deny my words, deny your deeds!  Let all be false in you—­it is but one pain more, and my heart is not broken yet.  It will bear another.  Tell me that what I saw had no reality—­that you did not make him sleep—­here, on this spot, before my eyes—­that you did not pour your love into his sleeping ears, that you did not command, implore, entreat—­and fail!  What is it all to me, whether you speak truth or not?  Tell me it is not true that I would die a thousand martyrdoms for your sake, as you are, and if you were a thousand times worse than you are!  Your wrong, your right, your truth, your falsehood, you yourself are swallowed up in the love I bear you!  I love you always, and I will say it, and say it again—­ah, your eyes!  I love them, too!  Take me into them, Unorna—­whether in hate or love—­but in love—­yes—­love—­Unorna—­golden Unorna!”

With the cry on his lips—­the name he had given her in other days—­he made one mad step forwards, throwing out his arms as though to clasp her to him.  But it was too late.  Even while he had been speaking her mysterious influence had overpowered him, as he had known that it would, when she so pleased.

She caught his two hands in the air, and pressed him back and held him against the tall slab.  The whole pitilessness of her nature gleamed like a cold light in her white face.