"Not
this time. But it was a sharp strain, and it would not be safe to try it
again."
He thrust his gloved hands into the pockets of his fur coat, so that the
stick he held stood upright against his shoulder in a rather military
fashion. The fur cap sat a little to one side on his strange head, his
eyes twinkled, his long white beard waved in the cold wind, and his
whole appearance was that of a jaunty gnome-king, well satisfied with
the inspection of his treasure chamber.
And he had cause for satisfaction, as he knew well enough when he
thought of the decided progress made in the great experiment. The cost
at which that progress had been obtained was nothing. Had Israel Kafka
perished altogether under the treatment he had received, Keyork Arabian
would have bestowed no more attention upon the catastrophe than would
have been barely necessary in order to conceal it and to protect himself
and Unorna from the consequences of the crime. In the duel with death,
the life of one man was of small consequence, and Keyork would have
sacrificed thousands to his purposes with equal indifference to their
intrinsic value and with a proportionately greater interest in the
result to be attained. There was a terrible logic in his mental process.
Life was a treasure literally inestimable in value. Death was the
destroyer of this treasure, devised by the Supreme Power as a sure means
of limiting man's activity and intelligence.
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