Her own supremely loving look had not vanished, her lips still parted
sweetly, as forming the word that was to answer his, and the calm
indifferent face of the waking man was already before her.
"What is it?" he asked, in his kind and passionless voice. "What were
you going to ask me, Unorna?"
It was gone. The terribly earnest appeal had been in vain. Not a trace
of that short vision of love remained impressed upon his brain.
With a smothered cry of agony Unorna leaned against the great slab of
stone behind her and covered her eyes. The darkness of night descended
upon her, and with it the fire of a burning shame.
Then a loud and cruel laugh rang through the chilly air, such a laugh as
the devils in hell bestow upon the shame of a proud soul that knows
its own infinite bitterness. Unorna started and uncovered her eyes, her
suffering changed in a single instant to ungovernable and destroying
anger. She made a step forwards and then stopped short, breathing hard.
The Wanderer, too, had turned, more quickly than she. Between two tall
gravestones, not a dozen paces away, stood a man with haggard face and
eyes on fire, his keen, worn features contorted by a smile in which
unspeakable satisfaction struggled for expression with a profound
despair.
The man was Israel Kafka.
CHAPTER XIV
The Wanderer looked from Unorna to Kafka with profound surprise. He had
never seen the man and had no means of knowing who he was, still less of
guessing what had brought him to the lonely place, or why he had broken
into a laugh, of which the harsh, wild tones still echoed through the
wide cemetery.
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