to his sanity," objected
Keyork. "We come back to the starting-point. We must settle all this
before we go to him. A lunatic asylum is not a club in this country.
There is a great deal of formality connected with getting into it, and
a great deal more connected with getting out. Now, I could not get a
keeper for Kafka without going to the physician in charge and making
a statement, and demanding an examination, and all the rest of it. And
Israel Kafka is a person of importance among his own people. He comes of
great Jews in Moravia, and we should have the whole Jews' quarter--which
means nearly the whole of Prague, in a broad sense--about our ears
in twenty-four hours. No, no, my friend. To avoid an enormous scandal
things must be done very quietly indeed."

"I cannot see anything to be done, then, unless we bring him here," said
the Wanderer, falling into the trap from sheer perplexity. Everything
that Keyork had said was undeniably true.

"He would be a nuisance in the house," answered the sage, not wishing,
for reasons of his own, to appear to accept the proposition too eagerly.
"Not but that the Individual would make a capital keeper. He is as
gentle as he is strong, and as quick as a tiger-cat."

"So far as that is concerned," said the Wanderer coolly, "I could take
charge of him myself, if you did not object to my presence."

"You do not trust me," said the other, with a sharp glance.

"My dear Keyork, we are old acquaintances, and I trust you implicitly
to do whatever you have predetermined to do for the advantage of your
studies, unless some one interferes with you. You have no more respect
for human life or sympathy for human suffering than you have belief
in the importance of anything not conducive to your researches. I am
perfectly well aware that if you thought you could learn something by
making experiments upon the body of Israel Kafka, you would not scruple
to make a living mummy of him, you would do it without the least
hesitation. I should expect to find him with his head cut off, living
by means of a glass heart and thinking through a rabbit's brain. That is
the reason why I do not trust you. Before I could deliver him into your
hands, I would require of you a contract to give him back unhurt--and a
contract of the kind you would consider binding."

Keyork Arabian wondered whether Unorna, in the recklessness of her
passion, had betrayed the nature of the experiment they had been making
together,