“Is this friendship?” asked Kafka. Then he sank upon his knees beside her, and looked up into her face.
“It is friendship; yes—why not? Am I like other women?”
“Then why need there be any parting?”
“If you will be my friend there need be none. You have forgiven me now—I see it in your eyes. Is it not true?”
He was at her feet, passive at last under the superior power which he had never been able to resist. Unorna’s fascination was upon him, and he could only echo her words, as he would have executed her slightest command, without consciousness of free will or individual thought. It was enough that for one moment his anger should cease to give life to his resistance; it was sufficient that Unorna should touch him thus, and speak softly, his eyelids quivered and his look became fixed, his strength was absorbed in hers and incapable of acting except under her direction. So long as she might please the spell would endure.
“Sit beside me now, and let us talk,” she said.
Like a man in a dream, he rose and sat down near her.
Unorna laughed, and there was something in the tone that was not good to hear. A moment earlier it would have wounded Israel Kafka to the quick and brought the hot, angry blood to his face. Now he laughed with her, vacantly, as though not knowing the cause of his mirth.
“You are only my slave, after all,” said Unorna scornfully.
“I am only your slave, after all,” he repeated.