“You do not know,” she answered.  “How should you?” Her glance fell and her voice trembled.

“I know enough,” he said.  He turned coldly from her and knelt again beside Israel Kafka.

He raised the pale head and supported it upon his knee, and gazed anxiously into the face, raising the lids with his finger as though to convince himself that the man was not dead.  Indeed there seemed to be but little life left in him as he lay there with outstretched arms and twisted fingers, scarcely breathing.  In such a place, without so much as the commonest restorative to aid him, the Wanderer saw that he had but little chance of success.

Unorna stood aside, not looking at the two men.  It was nothing to her whether Kafka lived or died.  She was suffering herself, more than she had ever suffered in her life.  He had said that she was not a woman—­she whose whole woman’s nature worshiped him.  He had said that she was the incarnation of cruelty—­and it was true, though it was her love for him that made her cruel to the other.  Could he know what she had felt, when she had understood that Israel Kafka had heard her passionate words and seen her eager face, and had laughed her to scorn?  Could any woman at such a time be less than cruel?  Was not her hate for the man who loved her as great as her love for the man who loved her not?  Even if she possessed instruments of torture for the soul more terrible than those invented in darker ages to rack the human body, was she not justified in using them all?  Was not Israel Kafka guilty of the greatest of all crimes, of loving when he was not loved, and of witnessing her shame and discomfiture?  She could not bear to look at him, lest she should lose herself and try to thrust the Wanderer aside and kill the man with her hands.

Then she heard footsteps on the frozen path, and turning quickly she saw that the Wanderer had lifted Kafka’s body from the ground and was moving rapidly away, towards the entrance of the cemetery.  He was leaving her in anger, without a word.  She turned very pale and hesitated.  Then she ran forward to overtake him, but he, hearing her approach, quickened his stride, seeming but little hampered in his pace by the burden he bore.  But Unorna, too, was fleet of foot and strong.

“Stop!” she cried, laying her hand upon his arm.  “Stop!  Hear me!  Do not leave me so!”

But he would not pause, and hurried onward towards the gate, while she hung upon his arm, trying to hinder him and speaking in desperate agitation.  She felt that if she let him go now, he would leave her for ever.  In that moment even her hatred of Kafka sank into insignificance.  She would do anything, bear anything, promise anything rather than lose what she loved so wildly.

“Stop!” she cried again.  “I will save him—­I will obey you—­I will be kind to him—­he will die in your arms if you do not let me help you—­oh! for the love of Heaven, wait one moment!  Only one moment!”