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