“There will be no difficulty in securing Kafka,” he said.  “The real question is, what shall we do with him?  He is very much in the way at present, and he must be disposed of at once, or we shall have more trouble.  How infinitely more to the purpose it would have been if he had wisely determined to cut his own throat instead of Unorna’s!  But young men are so thoughtless!”

“I will only say one thing,” said the Wanderer, “and then I will leave the direction to you.  The poor fellow has been driven mad by Unorna’s caprice and cruelty.  I am determined that he shall not be made to suffer gratuitously anything more.”

“Do you think that Unorna was intentionally cruel to him?” inquired Keyork.  “I can hardly believe that.  She has not a cruel nature.”

“You would have changed your mind, if you had seen her this afternoon.  But that is not the question.  I will not allow him to be ill-treated.”

“No, no! of course not!” Keyork answered with eager assent.  “But of course you will understand that we have to deal with a dangerous lunatic, and that it may be necessary to use whatever means are most sure and certain.”

“I shall not quarrel with your means,” the Wanderer said quietly, “provided that there is no unnecessary brutality.  If I see anything of the kind I will take the matter into my own hands.”

“Certainly, certainly!” said the other, eyeing with curiosity the man who spoke so confidently of taking out of Keyork Arabian’s grasp whatever had once found its way into it.

“He shall be treated with every consideration,” the Wanderer continued.  “Of course, if he is very violent, we shall have to use force.”

“We will take the Individual with us,” said Keyork.  “He is very strong.  He has a trick of breaking silver florins with his thumbs and fingers which is very pretty.”

“I fancy that you and I could manage him.  It is a pity that neither of us has the faculty of hypnotising.  This would be the proper time to use it.”

“A great pity.  But there are other things that will do almost as well.”

“What, for instance?”

“A little ether in a sponge.  He would only struggle a moment, and then he would be much more really unconscious than if he had been hypnotised.”

“Is it quite painless?”

“Quite, if you give it gradually.  If you hurry the thing, the man feels as though he were being smothered.  But the real difficulty is what to do with him, as I said before.”

“Take him home and get a keeper from the lunatic asylum,” the Wanderer suggested.

“Then comes the whole question of an inquiry into his sanity,” objected Keyork.  “We come back to the starting-point.  We must settle all this before we go to him.  A lunatic asylum is not a club in this country.  There is a great deal of formality connected with getting into it, and a great deal more connected with getting out.  Now, I could not get a keeper for Kafka without going