and was resolved to protect him as well as to hinder him from committing any act of folly.  But he had only met him for the first time that very afternoon, and under circumstances which had not in the first instance suggested even the possibility of a friendship between the two.  His position towards Israel Kafka was altogether unexpected, and what he felt was no more than pity for his sufferings and indignation against those who had caused them.

When the door was suddenly opened, he stood still in his walk and faced it.  He hardly recognised Unorna in the pale, dishevelled woman with circled eyes who came towards him under the bright light.  She, too, stood still when she saw him, starting suddenly.  She seemed to be very cold, for she shivered visibly and her teeth were chattering.  Without the least protection against the bitter night air she had fled bareheaded and cloakless through the open streets from the church to her home.

“You here!” she exclaimed, in an unsteady voice.

“Yes, I am still here,” answered the Wanderer.  “But I hardly expected you to come back to-night,” he added.

At the sound of his voice a strange smile came into her wan face and lingered there.  She had not thought to hear him speak again, kindly or unkindly, for she had come with the fixed determination to meet her death at Israel Kafka’s hands and to let that be the end.  Amid all the wild thoughts that had whirled through her brain as she ran home in the dark, that one had not once changed.

“And Israel Kafka?” she asked, almost timidly.

“He is there—­asleep.”

Unorna came forward and the Wanderer showed her where the man lay upon a thick carpet, wrapped in furs, his pale head supported by a cushion.

“He is very ill,” she said, almost under her breath.  “Tell me what has happened.”

It was like a dream to her.  The tremendous excitement of what had happened in the convent had cut her off from the realisation of what had gone before.  Strange as it seemed even to herself, she scarcely comprehended the intimate connection between the two series of events, nor the bearing of the one upon the other.  Israel Kafka sank into such insignificance that she had began to pity his condition, and it was hard to remember that the Wanderer was the man whom Beatrice had loved, and of whom she had spoken so long and so passionately.  She found, too, an unreasoned joy in being once more by his side, no matter under what conditions.  In that happiness, one-sided and unshared, she forgot everything else.  Beatrice had been a dream, a vision, an unreal shadow.  Kafka was nothing to her, and yet everything, as she suddenly saw, since he constituted a bond between her and the man she loved, which would at least outlast the night.  In a flash she saw that the Wanderer would not leave her alone with the Moravian, and that the latter could not be moved for the present without danger to his life.  They must watch together by his side through the long hours.  Who could tell what the night would bring forth?