"By force, if need be," he answered very quietly.
The woman before him was not of those who fear or yield. She met his
glance boldly. Scarcely half an hour earlier she had been able to steal
away his senses and make him subject to her. She was ready to renew the
contest, though she realised that a change had taken place in him.
"You talk of force to a woman!" she exclaimed, contemptuously. "You are
indeed brave!"
"You are not a woman. You are the incarnation of cruelty. I have seen
it."
His eyes were cold and his voice was stern. Unorna felt a very sharp
pain and shivered as though she were cold. Whatever else was bad and
cruel and untrue in her wild nature, her love for him was true and
passionate and enduring. And she loved him the more for the strength he
was beginning to show, and for his determined opposition. The words he
had spoken had hurt her as he little guessed they could, not knowing
that he alone of men had power to wound her.
"You do not know," she answered. "How should you?" Her glance fell and
her voice trembled.
"I know enough," he said. He turned coldly from her and knelt again
beside Israel Kafka.
He raised the pale head and supported it upon his knee, and gazed
anxiously into the face, raising the lids with his finger as though to
convince himself that the man was not dead. Indeed there seemed to be
but little life left in him as he lay there with outstretched arms and
twisted fingers, scarcely breathing.
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