There were long intervals of silence now.  The first rush of his speech had spent itself, for he had told her much and she had heard it all, even through the mists of her changing moods.  And now that he was silent she longed to hear him speak again.  She could never weary of that voice.  It had been music to her in the days when it had been full of cold indifference—­now each vibration roused high harmonies in her heart, each note was a full chord, and all the chords made but one great progression.  She longed to hear it all again, wondering greatly how it could never have been not good to hear.

Then with the greater temptation came the less, enclosed within it, suddenly revealed to her.  There was but one thing she hated in it all.  That was the name.  Would he not give her another—­her own perhaps?  She trembled as she thought of speaking.  Would she still have Beatrice’s voice?  Might not her own break down the spell and destroy all at once?  Yet she had spoken once before.  She had told him that she loved him and he had not been undeceived.

“Beloved—­” she said at last, lingering on the single word and then hesitating.

He looked into her face as he drew her to him, with happy eyes.  She might speak, then, for he would hear tones not hers.

“Beloved, I am tired of my name.  Will you not call me by another?” She spoke very softly.

“By another name?” he exclaimed, surprised, but smiling at what seemed a strange caprice.

“Yes.  It is a sad name to me.  It reminds me of many things—­of a time that is better forgotten since it is gone.  Will you do it for me?  It will make it seem as though that time had never been.”

“And yet I love your own name,” he said, thoughtfully.  “It is so much—­or has been so much in all these years, when I had nothing but your name to love.”

“Will you not do it?  It is all I ask.”

“Indeed I will, if you would rather have it so.  Do you think there is anything that I would not do if you asked it of me?”

They were almost the words she had spoken to him that night when they were watching together by Israel Kafka’s side.  She recognised them and a strange thrill of triumph ran through her.  What matter how?  What matter where?  The old reckless questions came to her mind again.  If he loved her, and if he would but call her Unorna, what could it matter, indeed?  Was she not herself?  She smiled unconsciously.

“I see it pleases you,” he said tenderly.  “Let it be as you wish.  What name will you choose for your dear self?”

She hesitated.  She could not tell how far he might remember what was past.  And yet, if he had remembered he would have seen where he was in the long time that had passed since his awakening.

“Did you ever—­in your long travels—­hear the name Unorna?” she asked with a smile and a little hesitation.

“Unorna?  No.  I cannot remember.  It is a Bohemian word—­it means ’she of February.’  It has a pretty sound—­half familiar to me.  I wonder where I have heard it.”