Chapter VI

The Witch of Prague

by F. Marion Crawford

"I could make love--yes, and since you tell me to try, I
will."

He came and stood before her, straightening his diminutive
figure in a comical fashion as though he were imitating a soldier on
parade.

"In the first place," he said, "in order to appreciate my skill,
you should realise the immense disadvantages under which I labour. I
am a dwarf, my dear Unorna. In the presence of that kingly wreck of a
Homeric man"--he pointed to the sleeper beside them--"I am a
Thersites, if not a pigmy. To have much chance of success I should
ask you to close your eyes, and to imagine that my stature matches my
voice. That gift at least, I flatter myself, would have been
appreciated on the plains of Troy. But in other respects I resemble
neither the long-haired Greeks nor the trousered Trojans. I am old
and hideous, and in outward appearance I am as like Socrates as in
inward disposition I am totally different from him. Admit, since I
admit it, that I am the ugliest and smallest man of your
acquaintance."

"It is not to be denied," said Unorna with a smile.

"The admission will make the performance so much the more
interesting. And now, as the conjurer says when he begins, observe
that there is no deception. That is the figure of speech called
lying, because there is to be nothing but deception from beginning to
end. Did you ever consider the nature of a lie, Unorna? It is a very
interesting subject."

"I thought you were going to make love to me."

"True; how easily one forgets those little things! And yet no
woman ever forgave a man who forgot to make love when she expected
him to do so. For a woman, who is a woman, never forgets to be
exigent. And now there is no reprieve, for I have committed myself,
am sentenced, and condemned to be made ridiculous in your eyes. Can
there be anything more contemptible, more laughable, more utterly and
hopelessly absurd, than an old and ugly man declaring his unrequited
passion for a woman who might be his granddaughter? Is he not like a
hoary old owl, who leaves his mousing to perch upon one leg and hoot
love ditties at the evening star, or screech out amorous sonnets to
the maiden moon?"

"Very like," said Unorna with a laugh.

"And yet--my evening star--dear star of my fast-sinking
evening-- golden Unorna--shall I be cut off from love because my
years are many? Or rather, shall I not love you the more, because the
years that are left are few and scantily blessed? May not your dawn
blend with my sunset and make together one short day?"

"That is very pretty," said Unorna, thoughtfully. He had the
power of making his speech sound like a deep, soft music.

"For what is love?" he asked. "Is it a garment, a jewel, a
fanciful ornament which only boys and girls may wear upon a summer's
holiday? May we take it or leave it, as we please? Wear it, if it
shows well upon our beauty, or cast it off for others to put on when
we limp aside out of the race of fashion to halt and breathe before
we die? Is love beauty? Is love youth? Is love yellow hair or black?
Is love the rose upon the lip or the peach blossom in the cheek, that
only the young may call it theirs? Is it an outward grace, which can
live but so long as the other outward graces are its companions, to
perish when the first gray hair streaks the dark locks? Is it a
glass, shivered by the first shock of care as a mirror by a
sword-stroke? Is it a painted mask, washed colourless by the first
rain of autumn tears? Is it a flower, so tender that it must perish
miserably in the frosty rime of earliest winter? Is love the accident
of youth, the complement of a fresh complexion, the corollary of a
light step, the physical concomitant of swelling pulses and
unstrained sinews?"

Keyork Arabian laughed softly. Unorna was grave and looked up
into his face, resting her chin upon her hand.

"If that is love, if that is the idol of your shrine, the vision
of your dreams, the familiar genius of your earthly paradise, why
then, indeed, he who worships by your side, and who would share the
habitation of your happiness, must wear Absalom's anointed curls and
walk with Agag's delicate step. What matter if he be but a
half-witted puppet? He is fair. What matter if he be foolish,
faithless, forgetful, inconstant, changeable as the tide of the sea?
He is young. His youth shall cover all his deficiencies and wipe out
all his sins! Imperial love, monarch and despot of the human soul, is
become the servant of boys for the wage of a girl's first thoughtless
kiss. If that is love let it perish out of the world, with the bloom
of the wood violet in spring, with the flutter of the bright moth in
June, with the song of the nightingale and the call of the
mocking-bird, with all things that are fair and lovely and sweet but
for a few short days. If that is love, why then love never made a
wound, nor left a scar, nor broke a heart in this easy-going
rose-garden of a world. The rose blooms, blows, fades and withers and
feels nothing. If that is love, we may yet all develop into
passionless promoters of a flat and unprofitable commonwealth; the
earth may yet be changed to a sweetmeat for us to feed on, and the
sea to sugary lemonade for us to drink, as the mad philosopher
foretold, and we may yet all be happy after love has left us."

Unorna smiled, while he laughed again.

"Good," she said. "You tell me what love is not, but you have
not told me what it is."

"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.

"Possible? True? There is neither truth nor possibility in
anything else for me, in anything, in any one, but you, Unorna. The
service of my love fills the days and the nights and the years with
you--fills the world with you only; makes heaven to be on earth,
since heaven is but the air that is made bright with your breath, as
the temple of all temples is but the spot whereon your dear feet
stand. The light of life is where you are, the darkness of death is
everywhere where you are not. But I am condemned to die, cut off,
predestined to be lost-- for you have no pity, Unorna, you cannot
find it in you to be sorry for the poor old man whose last pulse will
beat for you; whose last word will be your name; whose last look upon
your beauty will end the dream in which he lived his life. What can
it be to you, that I love you so? Why should it be anything to you?
When I am gone--with the love of you in my heart, Unorna--when they
have buried the ugly old body out of your sight, you will not even
remember that I was once your companion, still less that I knelt
before you, that I kissed the ground on which you stood; that I loved
you as men love whose hearts are breaking, that I touched the hem of
your garment and was for one moment young--that I besought you to
press my hand but once, with one thought of kindness, with one last
and only word of human pity--"

He broke off suddenly, and there was a tremor in his voice which
lent intense expression to the words. He was kneeling upon one knee
beside Unorna, but between her and the light, so that she saw his
face indistinctly. She could not but pity him. She took his
outstretched hand in hers.

"Poor Keyork!" she said, very kindly and gently. "How could I
have ever guessed all this?"

"It would have been exceedingly strange if you had," answered
Keyork, in a tone that made her start.

Then a magnificent peal of bass laughter rolled through the
room, as the gnome sprang suddenly to his feet.

"Did I not warn you?" asked Keyork, standing back and
contemplating Unorna's surprised face with delight. "Did I not tell
you that I was going to make love to you? That I was old and hideous
and had everything against me? That it was all a comedy for your
amusement? That there was to be nothing but deception from beginning
to end? That I was like a decrepit owl screeching at the moon, and
many other things to a similar effect?"

Unorna smiled somewhat thoughtfully.

"You are the greatest of great actors, Keyork Arabian. There is
something diabolical about you. I sometimes almost think that you are
the devil himself!"

"Perhaps I am," suggested the little man cheerfully.

"Do you know that there is a horror about all this?" Unorna rose
to her feet. Her smile had vanished and she seemed to feel cold.

As though nothing had happened, Keyork began to make his daily
examination of his sleeping patient, applying his thermometer to the
body, feeling the pulse, listening to the beatings of the heart with
his stethoscope, gently drawing down the lower lid of one of the eyes
to observe the colour of the membrane, and, in a word, doing all
those things which he was accustomed to do under the circumstances
with a promptness and briskness which showed how little he feared
that the old man would wake under his touch. He noted some of the
results of his observations in a pocket-book. Unorna stood still and
watched him.

"Do you remember ever to have been in the least degree like
other people?" she asked, speaking after a long silence, as he was
returning his notes to his pocket.

"I believe not," he answered. "Nature spared me that
indignity--or denied me that happiness--as you may look at it. I am
not like other people, as you justly remark. I need not say that it
is the other people who are the losers."

"The strange thing is, that you should be able to believe so
much of yourself when you find it so hard to believe good of your
fellow-men."

"I object to the expression, 'fellow-men,'" returned Keyork
promptly. "I dislike phrases, and, generally, maxims as a whole, and
all their component parts. A woman must have invented that particular
phrase of yours in order to annoy a man she disliked."

"And why, if you please?"

"Because no one ever speaks of 'fellow-women.' The question of
woman's duty to man has been amply discussed since the days of Menes
the Thinite--but no one ever heard of a woman's duty to her
fellow-women; unless, indeed, her duty is to try and outdo them by
fair means or foul. Then why talk of man and his fellow-men? I can
put the wisest rule of life into two short phrases."

"Give me the advantage of your wisdom."

"The first rule is, Beware of women."

"And the second?"

"Beware of men," laughed the little sage. "Observe the
simplicity and symmetry. Each rule has three words, two of which are
the same in each, so that you have the result of the whole world's
experience at your disposal at the comparatively small expenditure of
one verb, one preposition, and two nouns."

"There is little room for love in your system," remarked Unorna,
"for such love, for instance, as you described to me a few minutes
ago."

"There is too much room for it in yours," retorted Keyork. "Your
system is constantly traversed in all directions by bodies, sometimes
nebulous and sometimes fiery, which move in unknown orbits at
enormous rates of speed. In astronomy they call them comets, and
astronomers would be much happier without them."

"I am not an astronomer."

"Fortunately for the peace of the solar system. You have been
sending your comets dangerously near to our sick planet," he added,
pointing to the sleeper. "If you do it again he will break up into
asteroids. To use that particularly disagreeable and suggestive word
invented by men, he will die."

"He seems no worse," said Unorna, contemplating the massive,
peaceful face.

"I do not like the word 'seems,'" answered Keyork. "It is the
refuge of inaccurate persons, unable to distinguish between facts and
appearances."

"You object to everything to-day. Are there any words which I
may use without offending your sense of fitness in language?"

"None which do not express a willing affirmation of all I say. I
will receive any original speech on your part at the point of the
sword. You have done enough damage to-day, without being allowed the
luxury of dismembering common sense. Seems, you say! By all that is
unholy! By Eblis, Ahriman, and the Three Black Angels! He is worse,
and there is no seeming. The heat is greater, the pulse is weaker,
the heart flutters like a sick bird."

Unorna's face showed her anxiety.

"I am sorry," she said, in a low voice.

"Sorry! No doubt you are. It remains to be seen whether your
sorrow can be utilized as a simple, or macerated in tears to make a
tonic, or sublimated to produce a corrosive which will destroy the
canker, death. But be sorry by all means. It occupies your mind
without disturbing me, or injuring the patient. Be sure that if I can
find an active application for your sentiment, I will give you the
rare satisfaction of being useful."

"You have the art of being the most intolerably disagreeable of
living men when it pleases you."

"When you displease me, you should say. I warn you that if he
dies-- our friend here--I will make further studies in the art of
being unbearable to you. You will certainly be surprised by the
result."

"Nothing that you could say or do would surprise me."

"Indeed? We shall see."

"I will leave you to your studies, then. I have been here too
long as it is."

She moved and arranged the pillow under the head of the sleeping
giant and adjusted the folds of his robe. Her touch was tender and
skilful in spite of her ill-suppressed anger. Then she turned away
and went towards the door. Keyork Arabian watched her until her hand
was upon the latch. His sharp eyes twinkled, as though he expected
something amusing to occur.

"Unorna!" he said, suddenly, in an altered voice. She stopped
and looked back.

"Well?"

"Do not be angry, Unorna. Do not go away like this."

Unorna turned, almost fiercely, and came back a step.

"Keyork Arabian, do you think you can play upon me as on an
instrument? Do you suppose that I will come and go at your word like
a child--or like a dog? Do you think you can taunt me at one moment,
and flatter me the next, and find my humour always at your
command?"

The gnome-like little man looked down, made a sort of
inclination of his short body, and laid his hand upon his heart.

"I was never presumptuous, my dear lady. I never had the least
intention of taunting you, as you express it, and as for your
humour-- can you suppose that I could expect to command, where it is
only mine to obey?"

"It is of no use to talk in that way," said Unorna, haughtily.
"I am not prepared to be deceived by your comedy this time."

"Nor I to play one. Since I have offended you, I ask your
pardon. Forgive the expression, for the sake of the meaning; the
thoughtless word for the sake of the unworded thought."

"How cleverly you turn and twist both thoughts and words!"

"Do not be so unkind, dear friend."

"Unkind to you? I wish I had the secret of some unkindness that
you should feel!"

"The knowledge of what I can feel is mine alone," answered
Keyork, with a touch of sadness. "I am not a happy man. The world,
for me, holds but one interest and one friendship. Destroy the one,
or embitter the other, and Keyork's remnant of life becomes but a
foretaste of death."

"And that interest--that friendship--where are they?" asked
Unorna in a tone still bitter, but less scornful than before."

"Together, in this room, and both in danger, the one through
your young haste and impetuosity, the other through my wretched
weakness in being made angry; forgive me, Unorna, as I ask
forgiveness----"

"Your repentance is too sudden; it savours of the death-bed."

"Small wonder, when my life is in the balance."

"Your life?" She uttered the question incredulously, but not
without curiosity.

"My life--and for your word," he answered, earnestly. He spoke
so impressively, and in so solemn a tone, that Unorna's face became
grave. She advanced another step towards him, and laid her hand upon
the back of the chair in which she previously had sat.

"We must understand each other--to-day or never," she said.
"Either we must part and abandon the great experiment--for, if we
part, it must be abandoned--"

"We cannot part, Unorna."

"Then, if we are to be associates and companions--"

"Friends," said Keyork in a low voice.

"Friends? Have you laid the foundation for a friendship between
us? You say that your life is in the balance. That is a figure of
speech, I suppose. Or has your comedy another act? I can believe well
enough that your greatest interest in life lies there, upon that
couch, asleep. I know that you can do nothing without me, as you know
it yourself. But in your friendship I can never trust--never!--still
less can I believe that any words of mine can affect your happiness,
unless they be those you need for the experiment itself. Those, at
least, I have not refused to pronounce."

While she was speaking, Keyork began to walk up and down the
room, in evident agitation, twisting his fingers and bending down his
head.

"My accursed folly!" he exclaimed, as though speaking to
himself. "My damnable ingenuity in being odious! It is not to be
believed! That a man of my age should think one thing and say
another--like a tetchy girl or a spoilt child! The stupidity of the
thing! And then, to have the idiotic utterances of the tongue
registered and judged as a confession of faith--or rather, of
faithlessness! But it is only just --it is only right--Keyork
Arabian's self is ruined again by Keyork Arabian's vile speeches,
which have no more to do with his self than the clouds on earth have
with the sun above them! Ruined, ruined-- lost, this time. Cut off
from the only living being he respects--the only being whose respect
he covets; sent back to die in his loneliness, to perish like a
friendless beast, as he is, to the funereal music of his own
irrepressible snarling! To growl himself out of the world, like a
broken-down old tiger in the jungle, after scaring away all possible
peace and happiness and help with his senseless growls! Ugh! It is
perfectly just, it is absolutely right and supremely horrible to
think of! A fool to the last, Keyork, as you always were--and who
would make a friend of such a fool?"

Unorna leaned upon the back of the chair watching him, and
wondering whether, after all, he were not in earnest this time. He
jerked out his sentences excitedly, striking his hands together and
then swinging his arms in strange gestures. His tone, as he gave
utterance to his incoherent self-condemnation, was full of sincere
conviction and of anger against himself. He seemed not to see Unorna,
nor to notice her presence in the room. Suddenly, he stopped, looked
at her and came towards her. His manner became very humble.

"You are right, my dear lady," he said. "I have no claim to your
forbearance for my outrageous humours. I have offended you, insulted
you, spoken to you as no man should speak to any woman. I cannot even
ask you to forgive me, and, if I tell you that I am sorry, you will
not believe me. Why should you? But you are right. This cannot go on.
Rather than run the risk of again showing you my abominable temper, I
will go away."

His voice trembled and his bright eyes seemed to grow dull and
misty.

"Let this be our parting," he continued, as though mastering his
emotion. "I have no right to ask anything, and yet I ask this of you.
When I have left you, when you are safe for ever from my humours and
my tempers and myself--then, do not think unkindly of Keyork Arabian.
He would have seemed the friend he is, but for his unruly tongue."

Unorna hesitated a moment. Then she put out her hand, convinced
of his sincerity in spite of herself.

"Let bygones be bygones, Keyork," she said. "You must not go,
for I believe you."

At the words, the light returned to his eyes, and a look of
ineffable beatitude overspread the face which could be so immovably
expressionless.

"You are as kind as you are good, Unorna, and as good as you are
beautiful," he said, and with a gesture which would have been courtly
in a man of nobler stature, but which was almost grotesque in such a
dwarf, he raised her fingers to his lips.

This time, no peal of laugher followed to destroy the impression
he had produced upon Unorna. She let her hand rest in his a few
seconds, and then gently withdrew it.

"I must be going," she said.

"So soon?" exclaimed Keyork regretfully. "There were many things
I had wished to say to you to-day, but if you have no time----"

"I can spare a few minutes," answered Unorna, pausing. "What is
it?"

"One thing is this." His face had again become impenetrable as a
mask of old ivory, and he spoke in his ordinary way. "This is the
question. I was in the Teyn Kirche before I came here."

"In church!" exclaimed Unorna in some surprise, and with a
slight smile.

"I frequently go to church," answered Keyork gravely. "While
there, I met an old acquaintance of mine, a strange fellow whom I
have not seen for years. The world is very small. He is a great
traveller--a wanderer through the world."

Unorna looked up quickly, and a very slight colour appeared in
her cheeks.

"Who is he?" she asked, trying to seem indifferent. "What is his
name?"

"His name? It is strange, but I cannot recall it. He is very
tall, wears a dark beard, has a pale, thoughtful face. But I need not
describe him, for he told me that he had been with you this morning.
That is not the point."

He spoke carelessly and scarcely glanced at Unorna while
speaking.

"What of him?" she inquired, trying to seem as indifferent as
her companion.

"He is a little mad, poor man, that is all. It struck me that,
if you would, you might save him. I know something of his story,
though not much. He once loved a young girl, now doubtless dead, but
whom he still believes to be alive, and he spends--or wastes--his
life in a useless search for her. You might cure him of the
delusion."

"How do you know that the girl is dead?"

"She died in Egypt, four years ago," answered Keyork. "They had
taken her there in the hope of saving her, for she was at death's
door already, poor child."

"But if you convince him of that."

"There is no convincing him, and if he were really convinced he
would die himself. I used to take an interest in the man, and I know
that you could cure him in a simpler and safer way. But of course it
lies with you."

"If you wish it, I will try," Unorna answered, turning her face
from the light. "But he will probably not come back to me."

"He will. I advised him very strongly to come back, very
strongly indeed. I hope I did right. Are you displeased?"

"Not at all!" Unorna laughed a little. "And if he comes, how am
I to convince him that he is mistaken, and that the girl is dead?"

"That is very simple. You will hypnotise him, he will yield very
easily, and you will suggest to him very forcibly to forget the
girl's existence. You can suggest to him to come back to-morrow and
the next day, or as often as you please, and you can renew the
suggestion each time. In a week he will have forgotten--as you know
people can forget --entirely, totally, without hope of recalling what
is lost."

"That is true," said Unorna, in a low voice. "Are you sure that
the effect will be permanent?" she asked with sudden anxiety.

"A case of the kind occurred in Hungary last year. The cure was
effected in Pesth. I was reading it only a few months ago. The
oblivion was still complete, as long as six months after the
treatment, and there seems no reason to suppose that the patient's
condition will change. I thought it might interest you to try it."

"It will interest me extremely. I am very grateful to you for
telling me about him."

Unorna had watched her companion narrowly during the
conversation, expecting him to betray his knowledge of a connection
between the Wanderer's visit and the strange question she had been
asking of the sleeper when Keyork had surprised her. She was
agreeably disappointed in this however. He spoke with a calmness and
ease of manner which disarmed suspicion.

"I am glad I did right," said he.

He stood at the foot of the couch upon which the sleeper was
lying, and looked thoughtfully and intently at the calm features.

"We shall never succeed in this way," he said at last. "This
condition may continue indefinitely, till you are old, and I--until I
am older than I am by many years. He may not grow weaker, but he
cannot grow stronger. Theories will not renew tissues."

Unorna looked up.

"That has always been the question," she answered. "At least,
you have told me so. Will lengthened rest and perfect nourishment
alone give a new impulse to growth or will they not?"

"They will not. I am sure of it now. We have arrested decay, or
made it so slow as to be imperceptible. But we have made many
attempts to renew the old frame, and we are no farther advanced than
we were nearly four years ago. Theories will not make tissues."

"What will?"

"Blood," answered Keyork Arabian very softly.

"I have heard of that being done for young people in illness,"
said Unorna.

"It has never been done as I would do it," replied the gnome,
shaking his head and gathering his great beard in his hand, as he
gazed at the sleeper.

"What would you do?"

"I would make it constant for a day, or for a week if I could--a
constant circulation; the young heart and the old should beat
together; it could be done in the lethargic sleep--an artery and a
vein--a vein and an artery--I have often thought of it; it could not
fail. The new young blood would create new tissue, because it would
itself constantly be renewed in the young body which is able to renew
it, only expending itself in the old. The old blood would itself
become young again as it passed to the younger man."

"A man!" exclaimed Unorna.

"Of course. An animal would not do, because you could not
produce the lethargy nor make use of suggestion for healing
purposes--"

"But it would kill him!"

"Not at all, as I would do it, especially if the young man were
very strong and full of life. When the result is obtained, an
antiseptic ligature, suggestion of complete healing during sleep,
proper nourishment, such as we are giving at present, by recalling
the patient to the hypnotic state, sleep again, and so on; in eight
and forty hours your young man would be waked and would never know
what had happened to him--unless he felt a little older, by nervous
sympathy," added the sage with a low laugh.

"Are you perfectly sure of what you say?" asked Unorna
eagerly.

"Absolutely. I have examined the question for years. There can
be no doubt of it. Food can maintain life, blood alone can renew
it."

"Have you everything you need here?" inquired Unorna.

"Everything. There is no hospital in Europe that has the
appliances we have prepared for every emergency."

He looked at her face curiously. It was ghastly pale with
excitement. The pupil of her brown eye was so widely expanded that
the iris looked black, while the aperture of the gray one was
contracted to the size of a pin's head, so that the effect was almost
that of a white and sightless ball.

"You seem interested," said the gnome.

"Would such a man--such a man as Israel Kafka answer the
purpose?" she asked.

"Admirably," replied the other, beginning to understand.

"Keyork Arabian," whispered Unorna, coming close to him and
bending down to his ear, "Israel Kafka is alone under the palm tree
where I always sit. He is asleep, and he will not wake."

The gnome looked up and nodded gravely. But she was gone almost
before she had finished speaking the words.

"As upon an instrument," said the little man, quoting Unorna's
angry speech. "Truly I can play upon you, but it is a strange
music."

Half an hour later Unorna returned to her place among the
flowers, but Israel Kafka was gone.