She was very tired, and the absolute stillness was refreshing and restoring after the long-drawn-out emotions of the stormy day.  Never, in her short and passionate life, had so many events been crowded into the space of a few hours.  Since the morning she had felt almost everything that her wild, high-strung nature was capable of feeling—­love, triumph, failure, humiliation—­anger, hate, despair, and danger of sudden death.  She was amazed when, looking back, she remembered that at noon on that day her life and all its interests had been stationary at the point familiar to her during a whole month, the point that still lay within the boundaries of hope’s kingdom, the point at which the man she loved had wounded her by speaking of brotherly affection and sisterly regard.  She could almost believe, when she thought of it all, that some one had done to her as she had done to others, that she had been cast into a state of sleep, and had been forced against her will to live through the storms of years in the lethargy of an hour.  And yet, despite all, her memory was distinct, her faculties were awake, her intellect had lost none of its clearness, even in the last and worst hour of all.  She could recall each look on the Wanderer’s face, each tone of his cold speech, each intonation of her own passionate outpourings.  Her strong memory had retained all, and there was not the slightest break in the continuity of her recollections.  But there was little comfort to be derived from the certainty that she had not been dreaming, and that everything had really taken place precisely as she remembered it.  She would have given all she possessed, which was much, to return to the hour of noon on that same day.

In so far as a very unruly nature can understand itself, Unorna understood the springs of the actions, she regretted and confessed that in all likelihood she would do again as she had done at each successive stage.  Indeed, since the last great outbreak of her heart, she realised more than ever the great proportions which her love had of late assumed; and she saw that she was indeed ready, as she had said, to dare everything and risk everything for the sake of obtaining the very least show of passion in return.  It was quite clear to her, since she had failed so totally, that she should have had patience, that she ought to have accepted gratefully the man’s offer of brotherly devotion, and trusted in time to bring about a further and less platonic development.  But she was equally sure that she could never have found the patience, and that if she had restrained herself to-day she would have given way to-morrow.  She possessed all the blind indifference to consequences which is a chief characteristic of the Slav nature when dominated by passion.  She had shone it in her rash readiness to face Israel Kafka at the moment of leaving her own home.  If she could not have what she longed for, she cared as little what became of her as she cared for Kafka’s own fate.  She had but