n love whose hearts are breaking, that I touched the hem
of your garment and was for one moment young--that I besought you to
press my hand but once, with one thought of kindness, with one last and
only word of human pity--"

He broke off suddenly, and there was a tremor in his voice which lent
intense expression to the words. He was kneeling upon one knee beside
Unorna, but between her and the light, so that she saw his face
indistinctly. She could not but pity him. She took his outstretched hand
in hers.

"Poor Keyork!" she said, very kindly and gently. "How could I have ever
guessed all this?"

"It would have been exceedingly strange if you had," answered Keyork, in
a tone that made her start.

Then a magnificent peal of bass laughter rolled through the room, as the
gnome sprang suddenly to his feet.

"Did I not warn you?" asked Keyork, standing back and contemplating
Unorna's surprised face with delight. "Did I not tell you that I was
going to make love to you? That I was old and hideous and had everything
against me? That it was all a comedy for your amusement? That there was
to be nothing but deception from beginning to end? That I was like a
decrepit owl screeching at the moon, and many other things to a similar
effect?"

Unorna smiled somewhat thoughtfully.

"You are the greatest of great actors, Keyork Arabian. There is
something diabolical about you. I sometimes almost think that you are
the devil himself!"

"Perhaps I am," suggested the little man cheerfully.

"Do you know that there is a horror about all this?" Unorna rose to her
feet. Her smile had vanished and she seemed to feel cold.

As though nothing had happened, Keyork began to make his daily
examination of his sleeping patient, applying his thermometer to the
body, feeling the pulse, listening to the beatings of the heart with
his stethoscope, gently drawing down the lower lid of one of the eyes
to observe the colour of the membrane, and, in a word, doing all those
things which he was accustomed to do under the circumstances with a
promptness and briskness which showed how little he feared that the
old man would wake under his touch. He noted some of the results of his
observations in a pocket-book. Unorna stood still and watched him.

"Do you remember ever to have been in the least degree like other
people?" she asked, speaking after a long silence, as he was returning
his notes to his pocket.

"I believe not," he answered. "Nature s