ything at the root of anything except Self? You moth, you
butterfly, you thread of floating gossamer! How can you understand the
incalculable value of Self--of that which is all to me and nothing to
you, or which, being yours, is everything to you and to me nothing? You
are so young--you still believe in things, and interests, and good and
evil, and love and hate, truth and falsehood, and a hundred notions
which are not facts, but only contrasts between one self and another!
What were you doing here when I found you playing with life and death,
perhaps with my life, for a gipsy trick, in the crazy delusion that this
old parcel of humanity can see the shadows of things which are not yet?
I saw, I heard. How could he answer anything save that which was in your
own mind, when you were forcing him with your words and your eyes to
make a reply of some sort, or perish? Ah! You see now. You understand
now. I have opened your eyes a little. Why did he hesitate, and suffer?
Because you asked that to which he knew there was no answer. And you
tortured him with your will until his individuality fell into yours, and
spoke your words."

Unorna's head sank a little and she covered her eyes. The truth of what
he said flashed upon her suddenly and unexpectedly, bringing with it the
doubt which had left her at the moment when the sleeper had spoken. She
could not hide her discomfiture and Keyork Arabian saw his advantage.

"And for what?" he asked, beginning to pace the broad room. "To know
whether a man will love you or not! You seem to have forgotten what
you are. Is not such a poor and foolish thing as love at the command of
those who can say to the soul, be this, or be that, and who are obeyed?
Have you found a second Keyork Arabian, over whom your eyes have no
power--neither the one nor the other?"

He laughed rather brutally at the thought of her greatest physical
peculiarity, but then suddenly stopped short. She had lifted her face
and those same eyes were fastened upon him, the black and the gray, in a
look so savage and fierce that even he was checked, if not startled.

"They are certainly very remarkable eyes," he said, more calmly, and
with a certain uneasiness which Unorna did not notice. "I wonder whom
you have found who is able to look you in the face without losing
himself. I suppose it can hardly be my fascinating self whom you wish to
enthrall," he added, conscious after a moment's trial that he was proof
against her