Unorna felt that the day would be intolerable if she could not hear from
other lips the promise of a predestined happiness. She was not really in
doubt, but she was under the imperious impulse of a passion which
must needs find some response, even in the useless confirmation of its
reality uttered by an indifferent person--the spirit of a mighty cry
seeking its own echo in the echoless, flat waste of the Great Desert.
Then, too, she placed a sincere faith in the old man's answers to her
questions, regardless of the matter inquired into. She believed that
in the mysterious condition between sleep and waking which she could
command, the knowledge of things to be was with him as certainly as the
memory of what had been and of what was even now passing in the outer
world. To her, the one direction of the faculty seemed no less possible
than the others, though she had not yet attained alone to the vision of
the future. Hitherto the old man's utterances had been fulfilled to the
letter. More than once, as Keyork Arabian had hinted, she had consulted
his second sight in preference to her own, and she had not been
deceived. His greater learning and his vast experience lent to his
sayings something divine in her eyes; she looked upon him as the
Pythoness of Delphi looked upon the divinity of her inspiration.
The irresistible longing to hear the passionate pleadings of her own
heart solemnly confirmed by the voice in which she trusted overcame at
last every obstacle.
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