u have me say? You know what love
is. Think of such love as yours can have been, and take twice that, and
three times over, and a hundred thousand times, and cram it, burning,
flaming, melting into your bursting heart--then you would know a tenth
of what I have known. Love, indeed! Who can have known love but me? I
stand alone. Since the dull, unlovely world first jarred and trembled
and began to move, there has not been another of my kind, nor has man
suffered as I have suffered, and been crushed and torn and thrown aside
to die, without even the mercy of a death-wound. Describe it? Tell
it? Look at me! I am both love's description and the epitaph on his
gravestone. In me he lived, me he tortured, with me he dies never to
live again as he has lived this once. There is no justice and no mercy!
Think not that it is enough to love and that you will be loved in
return. Do not think that--do not dream that. Do you not know that the
fiercest drought is as a spring rain to the rocks, which thirst not and
need no refreshment?"

Again he fixed his eyes on Unorna's face and faintly smiled. Apparently
she was displeased.

"What is it that you would say?" she asked coldly. "What is this that
you tell us of rocks and rain, and death-wounds, and the rest? You
say you loved me once--that was a madness. You say that I never loved
you--that, at least, is truth. Is that your story? It is indeed short
enough, and I marvel at the many words in which you have put so little!"

She laughed in a hard tone. But Israel Kafka's eyes grew dark and the
sombre fire beamed in them as he spoke again. The weary, tortured smile
left his wan lips, and his pale face grew stern.

"Laugh, laugh, Unorna!" he cried. "You do not laugh alone. And yet--I
love you still, I love you so well in spite of all that I cannot laugh
at you as I would, even though I were to see you again clinging to the
rock and imploring it to take pity on your thirst. And he who dies for
you, Unorna--of him you ask nothing, save that he will crawl away and
die alone, and not disturb your delicate life with such an unseemly
sight."

"You talk of death!" exclaimed Unorna scornfully. "You talk of dying for
me because you are ill to-day. To-morrow, Keyork Arabian will have cured
you, and then, for aught I know, you will talk of killing me instead.
This is child's talk, boy's talk. If we are to listen to you, you must
be more eloquent. You must give us such a tale of woe as shall draw