o listen to me, this last time, so patiently,
with only now and then a sneer and a cutting laugh."

"Why?"

"In order to make me suffer the more. You will never forgive me now, for
you know that I know, and that alone is a sin past all forgiveness, and
over and above that I am guilty of the crime of loving when you have no
love for me."

"And as a last resource you come to me and recapitulate your misdeeds.
The plan is certainly original, though it lacks wit."

"There is least wit where there is most love, Unorna. I take no account
of the height of my folly when I see the depth of my love, which has
swallowed up myself and all my life. In the last hour I have known its
depth and breadth and strength, for I have seen what it can bear. And
why should I complain of it? Have I not many times said that I would die
for you willingly--and is it not dying for you to die of love for you?
To prove my faith it were too easy a death. When I look into your face I
know that there is in me the heart that made true Christian martyrs----"

Unorna laughed.

"Would you be a martyr?" she asked.

"Nor for your Faith--but for the faith I once had in you, and for the
love that no martyrdom could kill. Ay--to prove that love I would die a
hundred deaths--and to gain yours I would die the death eternal."

"And you would have deserved it. Have you not deserved enough already,
enough of martyrdom, for tracking me to-day, following me stealthily,
like a thief and a spy, to find out my ends and my doings?"

"I love you, Unorna."

"And therefore you suspect me of unimaginable evil--and therefore you
come out of your hiding-place and accuse me of things I have neither
done nor thought of doing, building up falsehood upon lie, and lie
upon falsehood in the attempt to ruin me in the eyes of one who has my
friendship and who is my friend. You are foolish to throw yourself upon
my mercy, Israel Kafka."

"Foolish? Yes, and mad, too! And my madness is all you have left
me--take it--it is yours! You cannot kill my love. Deny my words, deny
your deeds! Let all be false in you--it is but one pain more, and my
heart is not broken yet. It will bear another. Tell me that what I saw
had no reality--that you did not make him sleep--here, on this spot,
before my eyes--that you did not pour your love into his sleeping ears,
that you did not command, implore, entreat--and fail! What is it all to
me, whether you speak truth or not? Tell me it is not true