“It was to be supposed that your own fears were at the root of your anger,” observed Unorna, sitting down upon her chair and calmly folding her hands as though to wait until the storm should pass over.

“Is there anything at the root of anything except Self?  You moth, you butterfly, you thread of floating gossamer!  How can you understand the incalculable value of Self—­of that which is all to me and nothing to you, or which, being yours, is everything to you and to me nothing?  You are so young—­you still believe in things, and interests, and good and evil, and love and hate, truth and falsehood, and a hundred notions which are not facts, but only contrasts between one self and another!  What were you doing here when I found you playing with life and death, perhaps with my life, for a gipsy trick, in the crazy delusion that this old parcel of humanity can see the shadows of things which are not yet?  I saw, I heard.  How could he answer anything save that which was in your own mind, when you were forcing him with your words and your eyes to make a reply of some sort, or perish?  Ah!  You see now.  You understand now.  I have opened your eyes a little.  Why did he hesitate, and suffer?  Because you asked that to which he knew there was no answer.  And you tortured him with your will until his individuality fell into yours, and spoke your words.”

Unorna’s head sank a little and she covered her eyes.  The truth of what he said flashed upon her suddenly and unexpectedly, bringing with it the doubt which had left her at the moment when the sleeper had spoken.  She could not hide her discomfiture and Keyork Arabian saw his advantage.

“And for what?” he asked, beginning to pace the broad room.  “To know whether a man will love you or not!  You seem to have forgotten what you are.  Is not such a poor and foolish thing as love at the command of those who can say to the soul, be this, or be that, and who are obeyed?  Have you found a second Keyork Arabian, over whom your eyes have no power—­neither the one nor the other?”

He laughed rather brutally at the thought of her greatest physical peculiarity, but then suddenly stopped short.  She had lifted her face and those same eyes were fastened upon him, the black and the gray, in a look so savage and fierce that even he was checked, if not startled.

“They are certainly very remarkable eyes,” he said, more calmly, and with a certain uneasiness which Unorna did not notice.  “I wonder whom you have found who is able to look you in the face without losing himself.  I suppose it can hardly be my fascinating self whom you wish to enthrall,” he added, conscious after a moment’s trial that he was proof against her influence.

“Hardly,” answered Unorna, with a bitter laugh.

“If I were the happy man you would not need that means of bringing me to your feet.  It is a pity that you do not want me.  We should make a very happy couple.  But there is much against me.  I am an old man, Unorna.  My figure was never of divine proportions, and as for my face, Nature made it against her will.  I know all that—­and yet, I was young once, and eloquent.  I could make love then—­I believe that I could still if it would amuse you.”