“Shall we part without one kind thought?” Her voice was softer still and so low and sweet that it seemed as though the words were spoken in the ripple of the tiny fountain.  There was magic in the place, in the air, in the sounds, above all in the fair woman’s touch.

“Is this friendship?” asked Kafka.  Then he sank upon his knees beside her, and looked up into her face.

“It is friendship; yes—­why not?  Am I like other women?”

“Then why need there be any parting?”

“If you will be my friend there need be none.  You have forgiven me now—­I see it in your eyes.  Is it not true?”

He was at her feet, passive at last under the superior power which he had never been able to resist.  Unorna’s fascination was upon him, and he could only echo her words, as he would have executed her slightest command, without consciousness of free will or individual thought.  It was enough that for one moment his anger should cease to give life to his resistance; it was sufficient that Unorna should touch him thus, and speak softly, his eyelids quivered and his look became fixed, his strength was absorbed in hers and incapable of acting except under her direction.  So long as she might please the spell would endure.

“Sit beside me now, and let us talk,” she said.

Like a man in a dream, he rose and sat down near her.

Unorna laughed, and there was something in the tone that was not good to hear.  A moment earlier it would have wounded Israel Kafka to the quick and brought the hot, angry blood to his face.  Now he laughed with her, vacantly, as though not knowing the cause of his mirth.

“You are only my slave, after all,” said Unorna scornfully.

“I am only your slave, after all,” he repeated.

“I could touch you with my hand and you would hate me, and forget that you ever loved me.”

This time the man was silent.  There was a contraction of pain in his face, as though a violent mental struggle were going on within him.  Unorna tapped the pavement impatiently with her foot and bent her brows.

“You would hate me and forget that you ever loved me,” she repeated, dwelling on each word as though to impress it on his consciousness.  “Say it.  I order you.”

The contraction of his features disappeared.

“I should hate you and forget that I ever loved you,” he said slowly.

“You never loved me.”

“I never loved you.”

Again Unorna laughed, and he joined in her laughter, unintelligently, as he had done before.  She leaned back in her seat, and her face grew grave.  Israel Kafka sat motionless in his chair, staring at her with unwinking eyes.  But his gaze did not disturb her.  There was no more meaning in it than in the expression of a marble statue, far less than in that of a painted portrait.  Yet the man was alive and in the full strength of his magnificent youth, supple, active, fierce by nature, able to have killed her with his hands in the struggle of a moment.  Yet she knew that without a word from her he could neither turn his head nor move in his seat.