Unorna’s anger rose within her. She remembered how in that very place, and but a month earlier, she had offered Israel Kafka her friendship, and it was as though a heavy retribution were now meted out to her for her cruelty on that day. She remembered his wrath and his passionate denunciations of friendship, his scornful refusal, his savage attempt to conquer her will, his failure and his defeat. She remembered how she had taken her revenge, delivering him over in his sleep to Keyork Arabian’s will. She wished that, like him, she could escape from the wound of the word in a senseless lethargy of body and mind. She knew now what he had suffered, for she suffered it all herself. He, at least, had been free to speak his mind, to rage and storm and struggle. She must sit still and hide her agony, at the risk of losing all. She bit her white lips and turned her head away, and was silent. “You are my best friend,” the Wanderer repeated in his calm voice, and every syllable pierced her like a glowing needle. “And does not friendship give rights which ought to be used? If, as I think, Unorna, you look upon me as an idler, as a worthless being, as a man without as much as the shadow of a purpose in the world, it is but natural that you should despise me a little, even though you may be very fond of me. Do you not see that?” Unorna stared at him with an odd expression for a moment. “Yes--I am fond of you!” she exclaimed, almost harshly. Then she laughed. He seemed not to notice her tone. “I never knew what friendship was before,” he went on. “Of course, as I said, I had friends when I was little more than a boy, boys and young men like myself, and our friendship came to this, that we laughed, and feasted and hunted together, and sometimes even quarrelled, and caring little, thought even less. But in those days there seemed to be nothing between that and love, and love I never understood, that I can remember. But friendship like ours, Unorna, was never dreamed of among us. Such friendship as this, when I often think that I receive all and give nothing in return.” Again Unorna laughed, so strangely that the sound of her own voice startled her. “Why do you laugh like that?” he asked. “Because what you say is so unjust to yourself,” she answered, nervously and scarcely seeing him where he sat. “You seem to think it is all on your side. And yet, I just told you that I was fond of you.” “I think it is a fondness greater than friendship that we feel for each other,” he said, presently, thrusting the probe of a new hope into the tortured wound. “Yes?” she spoke faintly, with averted face. “Something more--a stronger tie, a closer bond. Unorna, do you believe in the migration of the soul throughout ages, from one body to another?” “Sometimes,” she succeeded in saying.