that she could not charm by word, or touch, or look.  The odd shape of his head, she fancied, figured the outline and proportions of his intelligence, which was, as it were, pyramidal, standing upon a base so broad and firm as to place the centre of its ponderous gravity far beyond her reach to disturb.  There was certainly no other being of material reality that could have made Unorna start and turn pale by its inopportune appearance.

“The best thing you can do is to put him to sleep at once,” said the little man.  “You can be angry afterwards, and, I thank heaven, so can I—­and shall.”

“Forget,” said Unorna, once more laying her hand upon the waxen brow.  “Let it be as though I had not spoken with you.  Drink, in your sleep, of the fountain of life, take new strength into your body and new blood into your heart.  Live, and when I next wake you be younger by as many months as there shall pass hours till then.  Sleep.”

A low sigh trembled in the hoary beard.  The eyelids drooped over the sunken eyes, there was a slight motion of the limbs, and all was still, save for the soft and regular breathing.

“The united patience of the seven archangels, coupled with that of Job and Simon Stylites, would not survive your acquaintance for a day,” observed Keyork Arabian.

“Is he mine or yours?” Unorna asked, turning to him and pointing to the sleeper.

She was quite ready to face her companion after the first shock of his unexpected appearance.  His small blue eyes sparkled angrily.

“I am not versed in the law concerning real estate in human kind in the Kingdom of Bohemia,” he answered.  “You may have property in a couple of hundredweight, more or less, of old bones rather the worse for the wear and tear of a century, but I certainly have some ownership in the life.  Without me, you would have been the possessor of a remarkably fine skeleton by this time—­and of nothing more.”

As he spoke, his extraordinary voice ran over half a dozen notes of portentous depth, like the opening of a fugue on the pedals of an organ.  Unorna laughed scornfully.

“He is mine, Keyork Arabian, alive or dead.  If the experiment fails, and he dies, the loss is mine, not yours.  Moreover, what I have done is done, and I will neither submit to your reproaches nor listen to your upbraidings.  Is that enough?”

“Of its kind, quite.  I will build an altar to Ingratitude, we will bury our friend beneath the shrine, and you shall serve in the temple.  You could deify all the cardinal sins if you would only give your attention to the subject, merely by the monstrously imposing proportions you would know how to give them.”

“Does it ease you to make such an amazing noise?” inquired Unorna, raising her eyebrows.

“Immensely.  Our friend cannot hear it, and you can.  You dare to tell me that if he dies you are the only loser.  Do fifty years of study count for nothing?  Look at me.  I am an old man, and unless I find the secret of life here, in this very room, before many years are over, I must die—­die, do you understand?  Do you know what it means to die?  How can you comprehend that word—­you girl, you child, you thing of five and twenty summers!”