“You said so, but—­”

“But you did not expect me to keep my word,” said Keyork, slipping from his seat on the table with considerable agility and suddenly standing close before her.  “And do you not yet know that when I say a thing I do it, and that when I have got a thing I keep it?”

“So far as the latter point is concerned, I have nothing to say.  But you need not be so terribly impressive; and unless you are going to break your word, by which you seem to set such store, and quarrel with me, you need not look at me so fiercely.”

Keyork suddenly let his voice drop to its deepest and most vibrating key.

“I only want you to remember this,” he said.  “You are not an ordinary woman, as I am not an ordinary man, and the experiment we are making together is an altogether extraordinary one.  I have told you the truth.  I care for nothing but my individual self, and I seek nothing but the prolongation of life.  If you endanger the success of the great trial again, as you did to-day, and if it fails, I will never forgive you.  You will make an enemy of me, and you will regret it while you live, and longer than that, perhaps.  So long as you keep the compact there is nothing I will not do to help you—­nothing within the bounds of your imagination.  And I can do much.  Do you understand?”

“I understand that you are afraid of losing my help.”

“That is it—­of losing your help.  I am not afraid of losing you—­in the end.”

Unorna smiled rather scornfully at first, as she looked down upon the little man’s strange face and gazed fearlessly into his eyes.  But as she looked, the smile faded, and the colour slowly sank from her face, until she was very pale.  And as she felt herself losing courage before something which she could not understand, Keyork’s eyes grew brighter and brighter till they glowed like drops of molten metal.  A sound as of many voices wailing in agony rose and trembled and quavered in the air.  With a wild cry, Unorna pressed her hands to her ears and fled towards the entrance.

“You are very nervous to-night,” observed Keyork, as he opened the door.

Then he went silently down the stairs by her side and helped her into the carriage, which had been waiting since his return.

CHAPTER XI

A month had passed since the day on which Unorna had first seen the Wanderer, and since the evening when she had sat so long in conversation with Keyork Arabian.  The snow lay heavily on all the rolling moorland about Prague, covering everything up to the very gates of the black city; and within, all things were as hard and dark and frozen as ever.  The sun was still the sun, no doubt, high above the mist and the gloom which he had no power to pierce, but no man could say that he had seen him in that month.  At long intervals indeed, a faint rose-coloured glow touched the high walls of the Hradschin and transfigured for an instant