Keyork Arabian wondered whether Unorna, in the recklessness of her passion, had betrayed the nature of the experiment they had been making together, but a moment’s reflection told him that he need have no anxiety on this score. He understood the Wanderer’s nature too well to suspect him of wishing to convey a covert hint instead of saying openly what was in his mind.
“Taste one of these oranges,” he said, by way of avoiding an answer. “they have just come from Smyrna.” The Wanderer smiled as he took the proffered fruit.
“So that unless you have a serious objection to my presence,” he said, continuing his former speech, “you will have me as a guest so long as Israel Kafka is here.”
“My dear friend!” he exclaimed with alacrity. “If you are really in earnest, I am as really delighted. So far from taking your distrust ill, I regard it as a providentially fortunate bias of your mind, since it will keep us together for a time. You will be the only loser. You see how simply I live.”
“There is a simplicity which is the extremest development of refined sybarism,” the Wanderer said, smiling again. “I know your simplicity of old. It consists of getting precisely what you want, and in producing local earthquakes and revolutions when you cannot get it. Moreover you want what is good--to the taste, at least.”
“There is something in that,” answered Keyork with a merry twinkle in his eye. “Happiness is a matter of speculation. Comfort is a matter of fact. Most men are uncomfortable, because they do not know what they want. If you have tastes, study them. If you have intelligence, apply it to the question of gratifying your tastes. Consult yourself first--and nobody second. Consider this orange--I am fond of oranges and they suit my constitution admirably. Consider the difficulty I have had in procuring it at this time of year--not in the wretched condition in which they are sold in the market, plucked half green in Spain or Italy and ripened on the voyage in the fermenting heat of the decay of those which are already rotten--but ripe from the tree and brought to me directly by the shortest and quickest means possible. Consider this orange, I say. Do you vainly imagine that if I had but two or three like it I would offer you one?”