There had been one moment of happiness, in that first kiss, in the first pressure of those strong arms.  Then night descended.  The hands that held her had not been yet unclasped, the kiss was not cold upon her cheek, the first great cry of his love had hardly died away in a softened echo, and her punishment was upon her.  His words were lashes, his touch poison, his eyes avenging fires.  As in nature’s great alchemy the diamond and the blackened coal are one, as nature with the same elements pours life and death from the same vial with the same hand, so now the love which would have been life to Unorna was made worse than death because it was not for her.

Yet the disguise was terribly perfect.  The unconscious spell had done its work thoroughly.  He took her for Beatrice, and her voice for Beatrice’s there in the broad light, in the familiar place where he had so often talked with her for hours and known her for Unorna.  But a few paces away was the very spot where she had fallen at his feet last night and wept and abused herself before him.  There was the carpet on which Israel Kafka had lain throughout the long hours while they had watched together.  Upon that table at her side a book lay which they had read together but two days ago.  In her own chair she sat, Unorna still, unchanged, unaltered save for him.  She doubted her own senses as she heard him speak, and ever and again the name of Beatrice rang in her ears.  He looked at her hands, and knew them; at her black dress, and knew it for her own, and yet he poured out the eloquence of his love—­kneeling, then standing, then sitting at her side, drawing her head to his shoulder and smoothing her fair hair—­so black to him—­with a gentle hand.  She was passive through it all, as yet.  There seemed to be no other way.  He paused sometimes, then spoke again.  Perhaps, in the dream that possessed him, he heard her speak.  Possibly, he was unconscious of her silence, borne along by the torrent of his own long pent-up speech.  She could not tell, she did not care to know.  Of one thing alone she thought, of how to escape from it all and be alone.

She feared to move, still more to rise, not knowing what he would do.  As he was now, she could not tell what effect her words would have if she spoke.  It might be but a passing state after all.  What would the awakening be?  Would his forgetfulness of Beatrice and his coldness to herself return with the subsidence of his passion?  Far better that than to see him and hear him as he was now.

And yet there were moments now and then when he pronounced no name, when he recalled no memory of the past, when there was only the tenderness of love itself in his words, and then, as she listened, she could almost think it was for her.  It was bitter joy, unreal and fantastic, but it was a relief.  Had she loved him less, such a conflict between sense and senses would have been impossible even in imagination.  But she loved him greatly and the deep desire to be