A few hours earlier his answer would have brought fire to her eyes and anger to her voice.  But a real change had come over her, not lasting, perhaps, but strong in its immediate effects.

“Not even a little friendship left?” she said, breaking the silence that followed.

“I cannot change myself,” he answered, almost wishing that he could.  “I ought, perhaps,” he added, as though speaking to himself.  “I have done enough harm as it is.”

“Harm?  To whom?” She looked round suddenly and he saw the moisture in her eyes.

“To him,” he replied, glancing at Kafka, “and to you.  You loved him once.  I have ruined his life.”

“Loved him?  No—­I never loved him.”  She shook her head, wondering whether she spoke the truth.

“You must have made him think so.”

“I?  No—­he is mad.”  But she shrank before his honest look, and suddenly broke down.  “No—­I will not lie to you—­you are too true—­yes, I loved him, or I thought I did, until you came, and I saw that there was no one——­”

But she checked herself, as she felt the blood rising to her cheeks.  She could blush still, and still be ashamed.  Even she was not all bad, now that she was calm and that the change had come over her.

“You see,” the Wanderer said gently, “I am to blame for it all.”

“For it all?  No—­not for the thousandth part of it all.  What blame have you in being what you are?  Blame God in Heaven—­for making such a man.  Blame me for what you know; blame me for all that you will not let me tell you.  Blame Kafka for his mad belief in me and Keyork Arabian for the rest—­but do not blame yourself—­oh, no!  Not that!”

“Do not talk like that, Unorna,” he said.  “Be just first.”

“What is justice?” she asked.  Then she turned her head away again.  “If you knew what justice means for me—­you would not ask me to be just.  You would be more merciful.”

“You exaggerate——­” He spoke kindly, but she interrupted him.

“No.  You do not know, that is all.  And you can never guess.  There is only one man living who could imagine such things as I have done—­and tried to do.  He is Keyork Arabian.  But he would have been wiser than I, perhaps.”

She relapsed into silence.  Before her rose the dim altar in the church, the shadowy figure of Beatrice standing up in the dark, the horrible sacrilege that was to have been done.  Her face grew dark with fear of her own soul.  The Wanderer went so far as to try and distract her from her gloomy thoughts, out of pure kindness of heart.

“I am no theologian,” he said, “but I fancy that in the long reckoning the intention goes for more than the act.”

“The intention!” she cried, looking back with a start.  “If that be true——­”

With a shudder she buried her face in her two hands, pressing them to her eyes as though to blind them to some awful sight.  Then, with a short struggle, she turned to him again.