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the crater of a perpetually active volcano. I prefer the system of the brick liver. There is more durability in it." The carriage stopped before the door of Kafka's dwelling. Keyork got out with him and stood upon the pavement while the porter took the slender luggage into the house. He smiled as he glanced at the leathern portmanteau which was supposed to have made such a long journey while it had in reality lain a whole month in a corner of Keyork's great room behind a group of specimens. He had opened it once or twice in that time, had disturbed the contents and had thrown in a few objects from his heterogeneous collection, as reminiscences of the places visited in imagination by Kafka, and of the acquisition of which the latter was only assured in his sleeping state. They would constitute a tangible proof of the journey's reality in case the suggestion proved less thoroughly successful than was hoped, and Keyork prided himself upon this supreme touch. "And now," he said, taking Kafka's hand, "I would advise you to rest as long as you can. I suppose that it must have been a fatiguing trip for you, though I myself am as fresh as a May morning. There is nothing wrong with you, but you are tired. Repose, my dear boy, repose, and plenty of it. That infernal Sicilian doctor! I shall never forgive him for bleeding you as he did. There is nothing so weakening. Good-bye--I shall hardly see you again to-day, I fancy." "I cannot tell," answered the young man absently. "But let me thank you," he added, with a sudden consciousness of obligation, "for your pleasant company, and for making me go with you. I daresay it has done me good, though I feel unaccountably tired--I feel almost old." His tired eyes and haggard face showed that this at least was no illusion. The fancied journey had added ten years to his age in thirty days, and those who knew him best would have found it hard to recognise the brilliantly vital personality of Israel Kafka in the pale and exhausted youth who painfully climbed the stairs with unsteady steps, panting for breath and clutching at the hand-rail for support. "He will not die this time," remarked Keyork Arabian to himself, as he sent the carriage away and began to walk towards his own home. "Not this time. But it was a sharp strain, and it would not be safe to try it again." He thrust his gloved hands into the pockets of his fur coat, so that the stick he held stood upright against his sh
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