“How short the days are!” exclaimed Unorna, rather suddenly.

“How long, even at their shortest!” replied her companion.

“They might be short—­if you would.”

He did not answer her, though he glanced quickly at her face.  She was looking down at the pavement before her, as though picking her way, for there were patches of ice upon the stones.  She seemed very quiet.  He could not guess that her heart was beating violently, and that she found it hard to say six words in a natural tone.

So far as he himself was concerned he was in no humour for talking.  He had seen almost everything in the world, and had read or heard almost everything that mankind had to say.  The streets of Prague had no novelty for him, and there was no charm in the chance acquaintance of a beautiful woman, to bring words to his lips.  Words had long since grown useless in the solitude of a life that was spent in searching for one face among the millions that passed before his sight.  Courtesy had bidden him to walk with her, because she had asked it, but courtesy did not oblige him to amuse her, he thought, and she had not the power that Keyork Arabian had to force him into conversation, least of all into conversing upon his own inner life.  He regretted the few words he had spoken, and would have taken them back, had it been possible.  He felt no awkwardness in the long silence.

Unorna for the first time in her life felt that she had not full control of her faculties.  She who was always so calm, so thoroughly mistress of her own powers, whose judgment Keyork Arabian could deceive, but whose self-possession he could not move, except to anger, was at the present moment both weak and unbalanced.  Ten minutes earlier she had fancied that it would be an easy thing to fix her eyes on his and to cast the veil of a half-sleep over his already half-dreaming senses.  She had fancied that it would be enough to say “Come,” and that he would follow.  She had formed the bold scheme of attaching him to herself, by visions of the woman whom he loved as she wished to be loved by him.  She believed that if he were once in that state she could destroy the old love for ever, or even turn it to hate, at her will.  And it had seemed easy.  That morning, when he had first come to her, she had fastened her glance upon him more than once, and she had seen him turn a shade paler, had noticed the drooping of his lids and the relaxation of his hands.  She had sought him in the street, guided by something surer than instinct, she had found him, had read his thoughts, and had felt him yielding to her fixed determination.  Then, suddenly, her power had left her, and as she walked beside him, she knew that if she looked into his face she would blush and be confused like a shy girl.  She almost wished that he would leave her without a word and without an apology.