“There is little room for love in your system,” remarked Unorna, “for such love, for instance, as you described to me a few minutes ago.”
“There is too much room for it in yours,” retorted Keyork. “Your system is constantly traversed in all directions by bodies, sometimes nebulous and sometimes fiery, which move in unknown orbits at enormous rates of speed. In astronomy they call them comets, and astronomers would be much happier without them.”
“I am not an astronomer.”
“Fortunately for the peace of the solar system. You have been sending your comets dangerously near to our sick planet,” he added, pointing to the sleeper. “If you do it again he will break up into asteroids. To use that particularly disagreeable and suggestive word invented by men, he will die.”
“He seems no worse,” said Unorna, contemplating the massive, peaceful face.
“I do not like the word ‘seems,’” answered Keyork. “It is the refuge of inaccurate persons, unable to distinguish between facts and appearances.”
“You object to everything to-day. Are there any words which I may use without offending your sense of fitness in language?”
“None which do not express a willing affirmation of all I say. I will receive any original speech on your part at the point of the sword. You have done enough damage to-day, without being allowed the luxury of dismembering common sense. Seems, you say! By all that is unholy! By Eblis, Ahriman, and the Three Black Angels! He is worse, and there is no seeming. The heat is greater, the pulse is weaker, the heart flutters like a sick bird.”
Unorna’s face showed her anxiety.
“I am sorry,” she said, in a low voice.