ver the great proportions which her love had of late
assumed; and she saw that she was indeed ready, as she had said, to dare
everything and risk everything for the sake of obtaining the very least
show of passion in return. It was quite clear to her, since she had
failed so totally, that she should have had patience, that she ought
to have accepted gratefully the man's offer of brotherly devotion, and
trusted in time to bring about a further and less platonic development.
But she was equally sure that she could never have found the patience,
and that if she had restrained herself to-day she would have given way
to-morrow. She possessed all the blind indifference to consequences
which is a chief characteristic of the Slav nature when dominated by
passion. She had shone it in her rash readiness to face Israel Kafka
at the moment of leaving her own home. If she could not have what she
longed for, she cared as little what became of her as she cared for
Kafka's own fate. She had but one object, one passion, one desire, and
to all else her indifference was supreme. Life and death, in this world
or the next, were less weighty than feathers in a scale that measures
hundreds of tons. The very idea of balance was for the moment beyond
her imagination. For a while indeed the pride of a woman at once
young, beautiful, and accustomed to authority, had kept her firm in the
determination to be loved for herself, as she believed that she deserved
to be loved; and just so long as that remained, she had held her head
high, confidently expecting that the mask of indifference would soon be
shivered, that the eyes she adored would soften with warm light, that
the hand she worshipped would tremble suddenly, as though waking to
life within her own. But that pride was gone, and from its disappearance
there had been but one step to the most utter degradation of soul to
which a woman can descend, and from that again but one step more to a
resolution almost stupid in its hardened obstinacy. But as though to
show how completely she was dominated by the man whom she could not win
even her last determination had yielded under the slightest pressure
from his will. She had left her house beside him with the mad resolve
never again to be parted from him, cost what it might, reputation,
fortune, life itself. And yet ten minutes had not elapsed before she
found herself alone, trusting to a mere word of his for the hope of
ever seeing him again. She seemed