I cannot tell. I do not know what love is, and I never
knew. Perhaps it is the absence of it that makes me what I am--a body
and an intelligence without a soul. Even the intelligence I begin to
doubt. What sense has there ever been in all my wanderings? Why have I
been in every place, in every city? What went I forth to see? Not even a
reed shaken by the wind! I have spoken all languages, read thousands of
books, known men in every land--and for what? It is as though I had once
had an object in it all, though I know that there was none. But I have
realised the worthlessness of my life since I have been here. Perhaps
you have shown it to me, or helped me to see it. I cannot tell. I ask
myself again and again what it was all for, and I ask in vain. I am
lonely, indeed, in the world, but it has been my own choice. I remember
that I had friends once, when I was younger, but I cannot tell what has
become of one of them. They wearied me, perhaps, in those days, and the
weariness drove me from my own home. For I have a home, Unorna, and I
fancy that when old age gets me at last I shall go there to die, in one
of those old towers by the northern sea. I was born there, and there
my mother died and my father, before I knew them; it is a sad place!
Meanwhile, I may have thirty years, or forty, or even more to live.
Shall I go on living this wandering, aimless life? And if not what shall
I do? Love, says Keyork Arabian--who never loved anything but himself,
but to whom that suffices, for it passes the love of woman!"
"That is true, indeed," said Unorna in a low voice.
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