one object, one passion, one desire, and to all else her indifference was supreme.  Life and death, in this world or the next, were less weighty than feathers in a scale that measures hundreds of tons.  The very idea of balance was for the moment beyond her imagination.  For a while indeed the pride of a woman at once young, beautiful, and accustomed to authority, had kept her firm in the determination to be loved for herself, as she believed that she deserved to be loved; and just so long as that remained, she had held her head high, confidently expecting that the mask of indifference would soon be shivered, that the eyes she adored would soften with warm light, that the hand she worshipped would tremble suddenly, as though waking to life within her own.  But that pride was gone, and from its disappearance there had been but one step to the most utter degradation of soul to which a woman can descend, and from that again but one step more to a resolution almost stupid in its hardened obstinacy.  But as though to show how completely she was dominated by the man whom she could not win even her last determination had yielded under the slightest pressure from his will.  She had left her house beside him with the mad resolve never again to be parted from him, cost what it might, reputation, fortune, life itself.  And yet ten minutes had not elapsed before she found herself alone, trusting to a mere word of his for the hope of ever seeing him again.  She seemed to have no individuality left.  He had spoken and she had obeyed.  He had commanded and she had done his bidding.  She was even more ashamed of this than of having wept, and sobbed, and dragged herself at his feet.  In the first moment she had submitted, deluding herself with the idea she had expressed, that he was consigning her to a prison and that her freedom was dependent on his will.  The foolish delusion vanished.  She saw that she was free, when she chose, to descend the steps she had just mounted, to go out through the gate she had lately entered, and to go whithersoever she would, at the mere risk of meeting Israel Kafka.  And that risk she heartily despised, being thoroughly brave by nature, and utterly indifferent to death by force of circumstance.

She comforted herself with the thought that the Wanderer would come to her, once at least, when she was pleased to send for him.  She had that loyal belief inseparable from true love until violently overthrown by irrefutable evidence, and which sometimes has such power as to return even then, overthrowing the evidence of the senses themselves.  Are there not men who trust women, and women who trust men, in spite of the vilest betrayals?  Love is indeed often the inspirer of subjective visions, creating in the beloved object the qualities it admires and the virtues it adores, powerless to accept what it is not willing to see, dwelling in a fortress guarded by intangible, and therefore indestructible, fiction and proof against the artillery of facts.  Unorna’s confidence was, however, not misplaced.  The man whose promise she had received had told the truth when he had said that he had never broken any promise whatsoever.