Very skilfully had the whole story been put together in all its minutest details, carefully thought out and written down in the form of a journal before it had been impressed upon his sleeping mind with all the tyrannic force of Unorna’s strong will.  And there was but little probability that Israel Kafka would ever learn what had actually been happening to him while he fancied that he had been travelling swiftly from place to place.  He could still wonder, indeed, that he should have yielded so easily to Keyork’s pressing invitation to accompany the latter upon such an extraordinary flight, but he remembered then his last interview with Unorna and it seemed almost natural that in his despair he should have chosen to go away.  Not that his passion for the woman was dead.  Intentionally, or by an oversight, Unorna had not touched upon the question of his love for her, in the course of her otherwise well-considered suggestions.  Possibly she had believed that the statement she had forced from his lips was enough and that he would forget her without any further action on her part.  Possibly, too, Unorna was indifferent and was content to let him suffer, believing that his devotion might still be turned to some practical use.  However that may be, when Israel Kafka opened his eyes in the carriage he still loved her, though he was conscious that in his manner of loving a change had taken place, of which he was destined to realise the consequences before another day had passed.

When Keyork answered his first remark, he turned and looked at the old man.

“I suppose you are tougher than I,” he said, languidly.  “You will hardly believe it, but I have been dozing already, here, in the carriage, since we left the station.”

“No harm in that.  Sleep is a great restorative,” laughed Keyork.

“Are you so glad to be in Prague again?” asked Kafka.  “It is a melancholy place.  But you laugh as though you actually liked the sight of the black houses and the gray snow and the silent people.”

“How can a place be melancholy?  The seat of melancholy is the liver.  Imagine a city with a liver—­of brick and mortar, or stone and cement, a huge mass of masonry buried in its centre, like an enormous fetish, exercising a mysterious influence over the city’s health—­then you may imagine a city as suffering from melancholy.”

“How absurd!”

“My dear boy, I rarely say absurd things,” answered Keyork imperturbably.  “Besides, as a matter of fact, there is nothing absurd.  But you suggested rather a fantastic idea to my imagination.  The brick liver is not a bad conception.  Far down in the bowels of the earth, in a black cavern hollowed beneath the lowest foundations of the oldest church, the brick liver was built by the cunning magicians of old, to last for ever, to purify the city’s blood, to regulate the city’s life, and in a measure to control its destinies by means of its passions.  A few wise men have handed down the knowledge of the