“Love is the immortal essence of mortal passion, together they are as soul and body, one being; separate them, and the body without the soul is a monster, the soul without the body is no longer human, nor earthly, nor real to us at all, though still divine.  Love is the world’s maker, master and destroyer, the magician whose word can change water to blood, and blood to fire, the dove to a serpent, and the serpent to a dove—­ay, and can make of that same dove an eagle, with an eagle’s beak, and talons, and air-cleaving wing-stroke.  Love is the spirit of life and the angel of death.  He speaks, and the thorny wilderness of the lonely heart is become a paradise of flowers.  He is silent, and the garden is but a blackened desert over which a destroying flame has passed in the arms of the east wind.  Love stands at the gateway of each human soul, holding in his hands a rose and a drawn sword—­the sword is for the many, the rose for the one.”

He sighed and was silent.  Unorna looked at him curiously.

“Have you ever loved, that you should talk like that?” she asked.  He turned upon her almost fiercely.

“Loved?  Yes, as you can never love; as you, in your woman’s heart, can never dream of loving—­with every thought, with every fibre, with every pulse, with every breath; with a love that is burning the old oak through and through, root and branch, core and knot, to feathery ashes that you may scatter with a sigh—­the only sigh you will ever breathe for me, Unorna.  Have I loved?  Can I love?  Do I love to-day as I loved yesterday and shall love to-morrow?  Ah, child!  That you should ask that, with your angel’s face, when I am in hell for you!  When I would give my body to death and my soul to darkness for a touch of your hand, for as much kindness and gentleness in a word from your dear lips as you give the beggars in the street!  When I would tear out my heart with my hands to feed the very dog that fawns on you—­and who is more to you than I, because he is yours, and all that is yours I love, and worship, and adore!”

Unorna had looked up and smiled at first, believing that it was all but a comedy, as he had told her that it should be.  But as he spoke, and the strong words chased each other in the torrent of his passionate speech, she was startled and surprised.  There was a force in his language, a fiery energy in his look, a ring of half-desperate hope in his deep voice, which moved her to strange thoughts.  His face, too, was changed and ennobled, his gestures larger, even his small stature ceased, for once, to seem dwarfish and gnome-like.

“Keyork Arabian, is it possible that you love me?” she cried, in her wonder.