“You do not really love me,” she said softly.

Israel Kafka started, as a man who is struck unawares.  The monstrous untruth which filled the words broke down his guard, sudden tears veiled the penetrating sharpness of his gaze, and his hand trembled.

“I do not love you?  I!  Unorna—­Unorna!”

The first words broke from him in a cry of horror and stupefaction.  But her name, when he spoke it, sounded as the death moan of a young wild animal wounded beyond all power to turn at bay.

He moved unsteadily and laid hold of the tall chair in which she sat.  He was behind her now, standing, but bending down so that his forehead pressed his fingers.  He could not bear to look upon her hair, still less upon her face.  Even his hands were white and bloodless.  Unorna could hear his quick breathing just above her shoulder.  She sat quite still, and her lips were smiling, though her brow was thoughtful and almost sad.  She knew that the struggle was over and that she had gained the mastery, though the price of victory might be a broken heart.

“You thought I was jesting,” she said in a low voice, looking before her into the deep foliage, but knowing that her softest whisper would reach him.  “But there was no jest in what I said—­nor any unkindness in what I meant, though it is all my fault.  But that is true—­you never loved me as I would be loved.”

“Unorna——­”

“No, I am not unkind.  Your love is young, fierce, inconstant; half terrible, half boyish, aflame to-day, asleep to-morrow, ready to turn into hatred at one moment, to melt into tears at the next, intermittent, unstable as water, fleeting as a cloud’s shadow on the mountain side—­”

“It pleased you once,” said Israel Kafka in broken tones.  “It is not less love because you are weary of it, and of me.”

“Weary, you say?  No, not weary—­and very truly not of you.  You will believe that to-day, to-morrow, you will still try to force life into your belief—­and then it will be dead and gone like all thoughts which have never entered into the shapes of reality.  We have not loved each other.  We have but fancied that it would be sweet to love, and the knife of truth has parted the web of our dreams, keenly, in the midst, so that we see before us what is, though the ghost of what might have been is yet lingering near.”

“Who wove that web, Unorna?  You, or I?” He lifted his heavy eyes and gazed at her coiled hair.

“What matters it whether it was your doing or mine?  But we wove it together—­and together we must see the truth.”

“If this is true, there is no more ‘together’ for you and me.”

“We may yet glean friendship in the fields where love has grown.”

“Friendship!  The very word is a wound!  Friendship!  The very dregs and lees of the wine of life!  Friendship!  The sour drainings of the heart’s cup, left to moisten the lips of the damned when the blessed have drunk their fill!  I hate the word, as I hate the thought!”