“She made me promise to send you to her if you would go,” he said.  “Will you go to her now?”

“What shall I tell her?  I warn you that since—­”

“You need not warn me.  I know what you would say.  But I will be no common murderer.  I will not kill her as she would have killed me.  Warn her, not me.  Go to her and say, ’Israel Kafka has promised before God that he will take your blood in expiation, and there is no escape from the man who is himself ready to die.’  Tell her to fly for her life, and that quickly.”

“And what will you gain by doing this murder?” asked the Wanderer, calmly.  He was revolving schemes for Unorna’s safety, and half amazed to find himself forced in common humanity to take her part.

“I shall free myself of my shame in loving her, at the price of her blood and mine.  Will you go?”

“And what is to prevent me from delivering you over to safe keeping before you do this deed?”

“You have no witness,” answered Kafka with a smile.  “You are a stranger in the city and in this country, and I am rich.  I shall easily prove that you love Unorna, and that you wish to get rid of me out of jealousy.”

“That is true,” said the Wanderer, thoughtfully.  “I will go.”

“Go quickly, then,” said Israel Kafka, “for I shall follow soon.”

As the Wanderer left the room he saw the Moravian turn toward the place where the keen, splendid Eastern weapons hung upon the wall.

CHAPTER XVII

The Wanderer knew that the case was urgent and the danger great.  There was no mistaking the tone of Israel Kafka’s voice nor the look in his face.  Nor did the savage resolution seem altogether unnatural in a man of the Moravian’s breeding.  The Wanderer had no time and but little inclination to blame himself for the part he had played in disclosing to the principal actor the nature of the scene which had taken place in the cemetery, and the immediate consequences of that disclosure, though wholly unexpected, did not seem utterly illogical.  Israel Kafka’s nature was eastern, violently passionate and, at the same time, long-suffering in certain directions as only the fatalist can be.  He could have loved for a lifetime faithfully, without requital; he would have suffered in patience Unorna’s anger, scorn, pity or caprice; he had long before now resigned his free will into the keeping of a passion which was degrading as it enslaved all his thoughts and actions, but which had something noble in it, inasmuch as it fitted him for the most heroic self-sacrifice.