s arms, so that she was free. She rose to her feet and stood
before him.

"You have dreamed all this," she said. "I am not Beatrice."

"Dreamed? Not Beatrice?" she heard him cry in his bewilderment.

Something more he said, but she could not catch the words. She was
already gone, through the labyrinth of the many plants, to the door
through which twelve hours earlier she had fled from Israel Kafka. She
ran the faster as she left him behind. She passed the entrance and the
passage and the vestibule beyond, not thinking whither she was going, or
not caring. She found herself in that large, well-lighted room in which
the ancient sleeper lay alone. Perhaps her instinct led her there as to
a retreat safer even than her own chamber. She knew that if she would
there was something there which she could use.

She sank into a chair and covered her face, trembling from head to foot.
For many minutes after that she could neither see nor hear--she would
hardly have felt a wound or a blow. And yet she knew that she meant to
end her life, since all that made it life was ended.

After a time, her hands fell in a despairing gesture upon her knees and
she stared about the room. Her eyes rested on the sleeper, then upon
his couch, lying as a prophet in state, the massive head raised upon a
silken pillow, the vast limbs just outlined beneath the snow-white robe,
the hoary beard flowing down over the great breast that slowly rose and
fell.

To her there was a dreadful irony in that useless life, prolonged in
sleep beyond the limits of human age. Yet she had thought it worth the
labour and care and endless watchfulness it had cost for years. And now
her own, strong, young and fresh, seemed not only useless but fit only
to be cut off and cast away, as an existence that offended God and man
and most of all herself.

But if she died then, there, in that secret chamber where she and her
companion had sought the secret of life for years, if she died now--how
would all end? Was it an expiation--or a flight? Would one short moment
of half-conscious suffering pay half her debt?

She stared at the old man's face with wide, despairing eyes. Many a
time, unknown to Keyork and once to his knowledge, she had roused the
sleeper to speak, and on the whole he had spoken truly, wisely, and
well. She lacked neither the less courage to die, nor the greater
to live. She longed but to hear one honest word, not of hope, but of
encouragement, but one word