He broke off suddenly, and there was a tremor in his voice which lent intense expression to the words. He was kneeling upon one knee beside Unorna, but between her and the light, so that she saw his face indistinctly. She could not but pity him. She took his outstretched hand in hers. “Poor Keyork!” she said, very kindly and gently. “How could I have ever guessed all this?” “It would have been exceedingly strange if you had,” answered Keyork, in a tone that made her start. Then a magnificent peal of bass laughter rolled through the room, as the gnome sprang suddenly to his feet. “Did I not warn you?” asked Keyork, standing back and contemplating Unorna’s surprised face with delight. “Did I not tell you that I was going to make love to you? That I was old and hideous and had everything against me? That it was all a comedy for your amusement? That there was to be nothing but deception from beginning to end? That I was like a decrepit owl screeching at the moon, and many other things to a similar effect?” Unorna smiled somewhat thoughtfully. “You are the greatest of great actors, Keyork Arabian. There is something diabolical about you. I sometimes almost think that you are the devil himself!” “Perhaps I am,” suggested the little man cheerfully. “Do you know that there is a horror about all this?” Unorna rose to her feet. Her smile had vanished and she seemed to feel cold. As though nothing had happened, Keyork began to make his daily examination of his sleeping patient, applying his thermometer to the body, feeling the pulse, listening to the beatings of the heart with his stethoscope, gently drawing down the lower lid of one of the eyes to observe the colour of the membrane, and, in a word, doing all those things which he was accustomed to do under the circumstances with a promptness and briskness which showed how little he feared that the old man would wake under his touch. He noted some of the results of his observations in a pocket-book. Unorna stood still and watched him. “Do you remember ever to have been in the least degree like other people?” she asked, speaking after a long silence, as he was returning his notes to his pocket. “I believe not,” he answered. “Nature spared me that indignity--or denied me that happiness--as you may look at it. I am not like other people, as you justly remark. I need not say that it is the other people who are the losers.” “The strange thing is, that you should be able to believe so much of yourself when you find it so hard to believe good of your fellow-men.” “I object to the expression, ‘fellow-men,’” returned Keyork promptly. “I dislike phrases, and, generally, maxims as a whole, and all their component parts. A woman must have invented that particular phrase of yours in order to annoy a man she disliked.” “And why, if you please?”