“Yes,” she said, “I was mad. You cannot understand it. I daresay you cannot even understand how I can speak of it now, and yet I cannot help speaking.”
Her manner was more natural and quiet than it had been since the moment of Kafka’s appearance in the cemetery. The Wanderer noticed the tone. There was an element of real sadness in it, with a leaven of bitter disappointment and a savour of heartfelt contrition. She was in earnest now, as she had been before, but in a different way. He could hardly refuse her a word in answer.
“Unorna,” he said gravely, “remember that you are leaving me no choice. I cannot leave you alone with that poor fellow, and so, whatever you wish to say, I must hear. But it would be much better to say nothing about what has happened this evening—better for you and for me. Neither men nor women always mean exactly what they say. We are not angels. Is it not best to let the matter drop?”
Unorna listened quietly, her eyes upon his face.
“You are not so hard with me as you were,” she said thoughtfully, after a moment’s hesitation, and there was a touch of gratitude in her voice. As she felt the dim possibility of a return to her former relations of friendship with him, Beatrice and the scene in the church seemed to be very far away. Again the Wanderer found it difficult to answer.
“It is not for me to be hard, as you call it,” he said quietly. There was a scarcely perceptible smile on his face, brought there not by any feeling of satisfaction, but by his sense of his own almost laughable perplexity. He saw that he was very near being driven to the ridiculous necessity of giving her some advice of the paternal kind. “It is not for me, either, to talk to you of what you have done to Israel Kafka to-day,” he confessed. “Do not oblige me to say anything about it. It will be much safer. You know it all better than I do, and you understand your own reasons, as I never can. If you are sorry for him now, so much the better—you will not hurt him any more if you can help it. If you will say that much about the future I shall be very glad, I confess.”
“Do you think that there is anything which I will not do—if you ask it?” Unorna asked very earnestly.
“I do not know,” the Wanderer answered, trying to seem to ignore the meaning conveyed by her tone. “Some things are harder to do than others——”
“Ask me the hardest!” she exclaimed. “Ask me to tell you the whole truth——”
“No,” he said firmly, in the hope of checking an outburst of passionate speech. “What you have thought and done is no concern of mine. If you have done anything that you are sorry for, without my knowledge, I do not wish to know of it. I have seen you do many good and kind acts during the last month, and I would rather leave those memories untouched as far as possible. You may have had an object in doing them which in itself was bad. I do not care. The deeds were good. Take credit for them and let me give you credit for them. That will do neither of us any harm.”