"Friends? Have you laid the foundation for a friendship between us?
You say that your life is in the balance. That is a figure of speech, I
suppose. Or has your comedy another act? I can believe well enough that
your greatest interest in life lies there, upon that couch, asleep. I
know that you can do nothing without me, as you know it yourself. But in
your friendship I can never trust--never!--still less can I believe that
any words of mine can affect your happiness, unless they be those you
need for the experiment itself. Those, at least, I have not refused to
pronounce."
While she was speaking, Keyork began to walk up and down the room, in
evident agitation, twisting his fingers and bending down his head.
"My accursed folly!" he exclaimed, as though speaking to himself. "My
damnable ingenuity in being odious! It is not to be believed! That a man
of my age should think one thing and say another--like a tetchy girl
or a spoilt child! The stupidity of the thing! And then, to have the
idiotic utterances of the tongue registered and judged as a confession
of faith--or rather, of faithlessness! But it is only just--it is only
right--Keyork Arabian's self is ruined again by Keyork Arabian's vile
speeches, which have no more to do with his self than the clouds on
earth have with the sun above them! Ruined, ruined--lost, this time. Cut
off from the only living being he respects--the only being whose
respect he covets; sent back to die in his loneliness, to perish like
a friendless beast, as he is, to the funereal music of his own
irrepressible snarling! To growl himself out of the world, like a
broken-down old tiger in the jungle, after scaring away all possible
peace and happiness and help with his senseless growls! Ugh! It is
perfectly just, it is absolutely right and supremely horrible to think
of! A fool to the last, Keyork, as you always were--and who would make a
friend of such a fool?"
Unorna leaned upon the back of the chair watching him, and wondering
whether, after all, he were not in earnest this time.
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