“And for what?” he asked, beginning to pace the broad room. “To know whether a man will love you or not! You seem to have forgotten what you are. Is not such a poor and foolish thing as love at the command of those who can say to the soul, be this, or be that, and who are obeyed? Have you found a second Keyork Arabian, over whom your eyes have no power—neither the one nor the other?”
He laughed rather brutally at the thought of her greatest physical peculiarity, but then suddenly stopped short. She had lifted her face and those same eyes were fastened upon him, the black and the gray, in a look so savage and fierce that even he was checked, if not startled.
“They are certainly very remarkable eyes,” he said, more calmly, and with a certain uneasiness which Unorna did not notice. “I wonder whom you have found who is able to look you in the face without losing himself. I suppose it can hardly be my fascinating self whom you wish to enthrall,” he added, conscious after a moment’s trial that he was proof against her influence.
“Hardly,” answered Unorna, with a bitter laugh.
“If I were the happy man you would not need that means of bringing me to your feet. It is a pity that you do not want me. We should make a very happy couple. But there is much against me. I am an old man, Unorna. My figure was never of divine proportions, and as for my face, Nature made it against her will. I know all that—and yet, I was young once, and eloquent. I could make love then—I believe that I could still if it would amuse you.”
“Try it,” said Unorna, who, like most people, could not long be angry with the gnome-like little sage.
CHAPTER VI
“I could make love—yes, and since you tell me to try, I will.”
He came and stood before her, straightening his diminutive figure in a comical fashion as though he were imitating a soldier on parade.