in her eyes; she looked upon him as the Pythoness of Delphi looked upon the divinity of her inspiration.
The irresistible longing to hear the passionate pleadings of her own heart solemnly confirmed by the voice in which she trusted overcame at last every obstacle. Unorna bent over the sleeper, looking earnestly into his face, and she laid one hand upon his brow.
“You hear me,” she said, slowly and distinctly. “You are conscious of thought, and you see into the future.”
The massive head stirred, the long limbs moved uneasily under the white robe, the enormous, bony hands contracted, and in the cavernous eyes the great lids were slowly lifted. A dull stare met her look.
“Is it he?” she asked, speaking more quickly in spite of herself. “Is it he at last?”
There was no answer. The lips did not part, there was not even the attempt to speak. She had been sure that the one word would be spoken unhesitatingly, and the silence startled her and brought back the doubt which she had half forgotten.
“You must answer my question. I command you to answer me. Is it he?”
“You must tell me more before I can answer.”
The words came in a feeble piping voice, strangely out of keeping with the colossal frame and imposing features.
Unorna’s face was clouded, and the ready gleam of anger flashed in her eyes as it ever did at the smallest opposition to her will.
“Can you not see him?” she asked impatiently.
“I cannot see him unless you lead me to him and tell me where he is.”
“Where are you?”
“In your mind.”
“And what are you?”
“I am the image in your eyes.”
“There is another man in my mind,” said Unorna. “I command you to see him.”
“I see him. He is tall, pale, noble, suffering. You love him.”
“Is it he who shall be my life and my death? Is it he who shall love me as other women are not loved?”
The weak voice was still for a moment, and the face seemed covered with a veil of perplexity.
“I see with your eyes,” said the old man at last.
“And I command you to see into the future with your own!” cried Unorna, concentrating her terrible will as she grew more impatient.
There was an evident struggle in the giant’s mind, an effort to obey which failed to break down an obstacle. She bent over him eagerly and her whole consciousness was centered in the words she desired him to speak.
Suddenly the features relaxed into an expression of rest and satisfaction. There was something unearthly in the sudden smile that flickered over the old waxen face—it was as strange and unnatural as though the cold marble effigy upon a sepulchre had laughed aloud in the gloom of an empty church.
“I see. He will love you,” said the tremulous tones.
“Then it is he?”
“It is he.”
With a suppressed cry of triumph Unorna lifted her head and stood upright. Then she started violently and grew very pale.
“You have probably killed him and spoiled everything,” said a rich bass voice at her elbow—the very sub-bass of all possible voices.
Keyork Arabian was beside her. In her intense excitement she had not heard him enter the room, and he had surprised her at once in the breaking of their joint convention and in the revelation of her secret. If Unorna could be said to know the meaning of the word fear in any degree whatsoever, it was in relation to Keyork Arabian, the man who during the last few years had been her helper and associate in the great experiment. Of all men she had known in her life, he was the only one whom she felt to be beyond the influence of her powers, the only one whom she felt that she could not charm by word, or touch, or look. The odd shape of his head, she fancied, figured the outline and proportions of his intelligence, which was, as it were, pyramidal, standing upon a base so broad and firm as to place the centre of its ponderous gravity far beyond her reach to disturb. There was certainly no other being of material reality that could have made Unorna start and turn pale by its inopportune appearance.
“The best thing you can do is to put him to sleep at once,” said the little man. “You can be angry afterwards, and, I thank heaven, so can I—and shall.”
“Forget,” said Unorna, once more laying her hand upon the waxen brow. “Let it be as though I had not spoken with you. Drink, in your sleep, of the fountain of life, take new strength into your body and new blood into your heart. Live, and when I next wake you be younger by as many months as there shall pass hours till then. Sleep.”
A low sigh trembled in the hoary beard. The eyelids drooped over the sunken eyes, there was a slight motion of the limbs, and all was still, save for the soft and regular breathing.
“The united patience of the seven archangels, coupled with that of Job and Simon Stylites, would not survive your acquaintance for a day,” observed Keyork Arabian.
“Is he mine or yours?” Unorna asked, turning to him and pointing to the sleeper.
She was quite ready to face her companion after the first shock of his unexpected appearance. His small blue eyes sparkled angrily.
“I am not versed in the law concerning real estate in human kind in the Kingdom of Bohemia,” he answered. “You may have property in a couple of hundredweight, more or less, of old bones rather the worse for the wear and tear of a century, but I certainly have some ownership in the life. Without me, you would have been the possessor of a remarkably fine skeleton by this time—and of nothing more.”
As he spoke, his extraordinary voice ran over half a dozen notes of portentous depth, like the opening of a fugue on the pedals of an organ. Unorna laughed scornfully.
“He is mine, Keyork Arabian, alive or dead. If the experiment fails, and he dies, the loss is mine, not yours. Moreover, what I have done is done, and I will neither submit to your reproaches nor listen to your upbraidings. Is that enough?”
“Of its kind, quite. I will build an altar to Ingratitude, we will bury our friend beneath the shrine, and you shall serve in the temple. You could deify all the cardinal sins if you would only give your attention to the subject, merely by the monstrously imposing proportions you would know how to give them.”
“Does it ease you to make such an amazing noise?” inquired Unorna, raising her eyebrows.
“Immensely. Our friend cannot hear it, and you can. You dare to tell me that if he dies you are the only loser. Do fifty years of study count for nothing? Look at me. I am an old man, and unless I find the secret of life here, in this very room, before many years are over, I must die—die, do you understand? Do you know what it means to die? How can you comprehend that word—you girl, you child, you thing of five and twenty summers!”
“It
