But Unorna was pitiless. She knew what her companion could not know,
namely, that Kafka must have followed them through the streets to the
cemetery and must have overheard Unorna’s passionate appeal and must
have seen and understood the means she was using to win the Wanderer’s
love. Her anger was terrible. She had suffered enough secret shame
already in stooping to the use of her arts in such a course. It had cost
her one of the greatest struggles of her life, and her disappointment
at the result had been proportionately bitter. In that alone she had
endured almost as much pain as she could bear. But to find suddenly that
her humiliation, her hot speech, her failure, the look which she knew
had been on her face until the moment when the Wanderer awoke, that
all this had been seen and heard by Israel Kafka was intolerable. Even
Keyork’s unexpected appearance could not have so fired her wrath. Keyork
might have laughed at her afterwards, but her failure would have been no
triumph to him. Was not Keyork enlisted on her side, ready to help her
at all times, by word or deed, in accordance with the terms of their
agreement? But of all men Kafka, whom she had so wronged, was the one
man who should have been ignorant of her defeat and miserable shame.
“Go!” she cried, with a gesture of command. Her eyes flashed and her
extended hand trembled.
There was such concentrated fury in a single word that the Wanderer
started in surprise, ignorant as he was of the true state of things.
“You are uselessly unkind,” he said gravely. “The poor man is mad. Let
me take him away.”
“Leave him to me,” she answered imperiously. “He will obey me.”
But Israel Kafka did not turn. He rested one hand upon the slab and
faced her. As when many different forces act together at one point,
producing after the first shock a resultant little expected, so the many
passions that were at work in his face finally twisted his lips into a
smile.
“Yes,” he said, in a low tone, which did not express submission. “Leave
me to her! Leave me to the Witch and to her mercy. It will be the end
this time. She is drunk with her love of you and mad with her hatred of
me.”
Unorna grew suddenly pale, and would have again sprung forward. But the
Wanderer stopped her and held her arm. At the same time he looked into
Kafka’s eyes and raised one hand as though in warning.
“Be silent!” he exclaimed.
“And if I speak, what then?” asked the Moravian with his evil smile.
“I will silence you,” answered the Wanderer coldly. “Your madness
excuses you, perhaps, but it does not justify me in allowing you to
insult a woman.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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