hear his quick breathing just above her shoulder. She sat quite still,
and her lips were smiling, though her brow was thoughtful and almost
sad. She knew that the struggle was over and that she had gained the
mastery, though the price of victory might be a broken heart.

"You thought I was jesting," she said in a low voice, looking before her
into the deep foliage, but knowing that her softest whisper would reach
him. "But there was no jest in what I said--nor any unkindness in what
I meant, though it is all my fault. But that is true--you never loved me
as I would be loved."

"Unorna----"

"No, I am not unkind. Your love is young, fierce, inconstant; half
terrible, half boyish, aflame to-day, asleep to-morrow, ready to turn
into hatred at one moment, to melt into tears at the next, intermittent,
unstable as water, fleeting as a cloud's shadow on the mountain side--"

"It pleased you once," said Israel Kafka in broken tones. "It is not
less love because you are weary of it, and of me."

"Weary, you say? No, not weary--and very truly not of you. You will
believe that to-day, to-morrow, you will still try to force life into
your belief--and then it will be dead and gone like all thoughts which
have never entered into the shapes of reality. We have not loved each
other. We have but fancied that it would be sweet to love, and the knife
of truth has parted the web of our dreams, keenly, in the midst, so that
we see before us what is, though the ghost of what might have been is
yet lingering near."