“And what is to prevent me from delivering you over to safe keeping before you do this deed?”
“You have no witness,” answered Kafka with a smile. “You are a stranger in the city and in this country, and I am rich. I shall easily prove that you love Unorna, and that you wish to get rid of me out of jealousy.”
“That is true,” said the Wanderer, thoughtfully. “I will go.”
“Go quickly, then,” said Israel Kafka, “for I shall follow soon.”
As the Wanderer left the room he saw the Moravian turn toward the place where the keen, splendid Eastern weapons hung upon the wall.
CHAPTER XVII
The Wanderer knew that the case was urgent and the danger great. There was no mistaking the tone of Israel Kafka’s voice nor the look in his face. Nor did the savage resolution seem altogether unnatural in a man of the Moravian’s breeding. The Wanderer had no time and but little inclination to blame himself for the part he had played in disclosing to the principal actor the nature of the scene which had taken place in the cemetery, and the immediate consequences of that disclosure, though wholly unexpected, did not seem utterly illogical. Israel Kafka’s nature was eastern, violently passionate and, at the same time, long-suffering in certain directions as only the fatalist can be. He could have loved for a lifetime faithfully, without requital; he would have suffered in patience Unorna’s anger, scorn, pity or caprice; he had long before now resigned his free will into the keeping of a passion which was degrading as it enslaved all his thoughts and actions, but which had something noble in it, inasmuch as it fitted him for the most heroic self-sacrifice.
Unorna’s act had brought the several seemingly contradictory elements of his character to bear upon one point. He had realised in the same moment that it was impossible for her to love him; that her changing treatment of him was not the result of caprice but of a fixed plan of her own, in the execution of which she would spare him neither falsehood nor insult; that to love such a woman was the lowest degradation; that he could nevertheless not destroy that love; and, finally, that the only escape from his shame lay in her destruction, and that this must in all probability involve his own death also. At the same time he felt that there was something solemn in the expiation he was about to exact, something that accorded well with the fierce traditions of ancient Israel, and the deed should not be done stealthily or in the dark. Unorna must know that she was to die by his hand, and why. He had no object in concealment, for his own life was already ended by the certainty that his love was hopeless, and on the other hand, fatalist as he was, he believed that Unorna could not escape him and that no warning could save her.
The Wanderer understood most of these things as he hastened towards her house through the darkening streets. Not a carriage was to be seen, and he was obliged to traverse the distance on foot, as often happens at supreme moments, when everything might be gained by the saving of a few minutes in conveying a warning.