n's instinct when it
had told her that love must be for herself and for her own sake, or not
be love at all.

The falseness, the fathomless untruth of it, would have been bad enough
alone. But the truth that was so strong made it horrible. Had she but
inspired in him a burning love for herself, however much against his
will, it would have been very different. She would have heard her name
from his lips, she would have known that all, however false, however
artificial, was for herself, while it might last. To know that it was
real, and not for her, was intolerable. To see this love of his break
out at last--this other love which she had dreaded, against which she
had fought, which she had met with a jealousy as strong as itself, and
struggled with and buried under an imposed forgetfulness--to feel its
great waves surging around her and beating up against her heart, was
more than she could bear. Her face grew whiter and her hands were cold.
She dreaded each moment lest he should call her Beatrice again, and say
that her fair hair was black and that he loved those deep dark eyes of
hers.

There had been one moment of happiness, in that first kiss, in the first
pressure of those strong arms. Then night descended. The hands that held
her had not been yet unclasped, the kiss was not cold upon her cheek,
the first great cry of his love had hardly died away in a softened
echo, and her punishment was upon her. His words were lashes, his
touch poison, his eyes avenging fires. As in nature's great alchemy the
diamond and the blackened coal are one, as nature with the same elements
pours life and death from the same vial with the same hand, so now the
love which would have been life to Unorna was made worse than death
because it was not for her.

Yet the disguise was terribly perfect. The unconscious spell had
done its work thoroughly. He took her for Beatrice, and her voice for
Beatrice's there in the broad light, in the familiar place where he had
so often talked with her for hours and known her for Unorna. But a few
paces away was the very spot where she had fallen at his feet last night
and wept and abused herself before him. There was the carpet on which
Israel Kafka had lain throughout the long hours while they had watched
together. Upon that table at her side a book lay which they had read
together but two days ago. In her own chair she sat, Unorna still,
unchanged, unaltered save for him. She doubted her own senses as sh