oke thus hoarsely, and brought his contorted
face closer and closer to hers, had gradually shrunk more and more into
the corner of the room, and there she remained now, flattened against
the wall, her wide-open, terror-filled eyes fixed staringly upon this
raving madman.

"You asked just now," he continued, in the same hoarse, guttural
whisper, which seemed literally to be racking and tearing his throat as
it came, "what the back-door key had to do with my not going to meet my
brother at Fiume. Well! It has this much to do with it, that you happen
to be my tokened wife, that you happen to be of my race and of my blood,
a sober, clean-living Jewess, please God, and not one of those
frivolous, empty-headed Christian girls--you are that now, I know; if
you were not I would kill you first and myself afterwards: therefore, if
to-night I catch a thief--any thief, I don't care who he is--sneaking
into this house by a back door when you happen to be here alone and
seemingly unprotected, if I catch any kind of thief or malefactor, I say
. . ."

He paused, and she, through teeth that chattered, contrived to murmur:

"Well? What do you say? Why don't you go on?"

"Because you understand," he said, with calm as sudden and as terrible
as his rage had been awhile ago. "I am not a Christian, you know, nor
yet a gentleman. I cannot walk up either to my lord's castle or to one
of these Christian Magyar peasants and strike him in the face for trying
to rob me of that which is more precious to me than life. I am a Jew
. . . a low-born, miserable Jew, whose whole race, origin and upbringing
are despicable in the sight of the noble lords as well as of the
Hungarian peasantry. Just a wretched creature whom one orders to hold
one's horse, to brush one's boots, to stand out of one's way, anyhow;
but not to meet as man to man, not to fight openly and frankly for the
woman whom one loves. Well! You happen to be a Jewess too, and tokened
to a Jew, and if either my lord or one of these d----d Magyar peasants
chooses to come sneaking round you like a thief in the night, well
. . ."

He paused, and from the pocket of his shabby trousers he half drew out a
long, sheathed hunting-knife, and then quickly hid it again from her
sight.

Klara smothered a desperate cry of terror. Leopold now turned his back
on her; he went up to the table and seizing a carafe of water, he poured
himself out a huge mugful and drank it down at a draught. The edge of