After some hours of much needed rest Tristan started out to find the Monk of Cluny. The task he had set himself was not one easy of execution, since the Benedictine friar was wont to visit the Roman sanctuaries following the promptings of the spirit without adhering to a definite routine. Thus the greater part of the day was consumed in a futile quest of him of whose counsel he stood sorely in need.
At the hour of sunset Tristan set anew upon his quest. His feet carried him to a remote region of the city, and when he regained his bearings he found himself before the convent of Santa Maria del Priorata with its environing groves of oleander and almond trees.
The moon was floating like a huge pearl of silver through vast seas of blue. The sleeping flowers were closed, like half-extinguished censers, breathing faint incense on the night's pale brow. From some dark bough a nightingale was shaking down a flood of song. The fountains from their stone basins leaped moonward in the passion of their love and seemed to fall sobbing back to earth. The night air breathed hot and languorous across the gardens of the Pincian Mount. Lutes tinkled here and there. And the magic of the night thrilled Tristan's soul. As in a trance his gaze followed the white figure that was moving noiselessly down a moss grown path. A thick hedge of laurel concealed her now. Then she paused as if she, too, were enraptured by the magic of the night.
The moon illumined the central lawn and the whispering fountains. Tall cypresses seemed to intensify the shade. In the distance he could faintly discern the white balustrade, crowning a terrace where green alleys wound obscurely beneath the canopy of darkest oak, and moss and violet made their softest bed. In the very centre of it was a small domed temple, a shrine to Love.
Tristan's senses began to swoon. Was it a hallucination—was it reality? A moon maiden she seemed, made mortal for a night, to teach all comers love in the sacred grove.
"Hellayne! Hellayne!"
His voice sounded strange to his own ears.
As in a dream he saw her come towards him. She came so silent and so pale in the spectral light that he feared lest it was the spectre of his mind that came to meet him. And once more the voice cried "Hellayne!" and then they lay in each other's arms. All her reluctance, all her doubts seemed to have flown at the sound of her name from his lips.
"Hellayne! Hellayne!" he whispered deliriously, kissing her eyes, her hair, her sweet lips, and folding her so close to him, as if he would never again part from her he loved better than life. "At last I have found you! How came you here? Speak! Is it indeed yourself, or is it some mocking spirit that has borrowed your form?"
And again he kissed her and their eyes held silent commune.
"It is I who have just refound you!" she whispered, as he looked enraptured into the sweet girlish face, the face that had not changed since he had left Avalon, though she seemed to have become more womanly, and in her eyes lay a pathetic sorrow.
What a rapture there was in that clear tone. But she trembled as she spoke. Would he understand? Would he believe?
"But—why—why—are you here?" he stammered.
"I have sought you long."
"You have followed me? You are not then a nun?"
"You see I am not."
"But why—oh why,—have you done this thing?"
She made no answer.
"You are here in Rome—and he is here. And you did not know?"
"I knew!" she replied with a little nod, like a questioned child.
"You knew! And he believes that I knew!"
"That is a small matter, dear. For he knows, that you knew not."
The endearment startled him. It seemed to cast her faith upon him.
"What are you doing here?" he said.
"I came because I had to come! I had no choice—!"
"No choice! Then why did you send me away?"
She gave a little shrug.
"I knew not how much I loved you."
"And yet, dearest, you cannot remain here. You know his moods better than any one else—and you know if he finds us—for your own sake, dearest, you cannot remain."
In the warmth of his entreaty he had used as endearing words as she. They were precious to her ears.
"Let him come!" she said, nestling close to him. "Let him come and kill me!"
She glanced about. He pointed to the castellated building that rose darkly beyond the holm-oaks.
"Yonder—is yonder your abode?" he stammered.
Suddenly the woman in her gained the mastery.
"Oh no! No! No! Let us hide! Wretch that I am, to risk your life with mine."
She had flung herself upon him. Around them rioted roses in wild profusion. To him it seemed like a bosquet of Eden. Upon his breast she sobbed. But no consideration of past or present could restrain his hand from gently soothing her silken hair.
"Oh, why did you leave me?" she cried. "Why could we not have loved without all this? Surely two souls can love—if love they must—without doing wrong to any one."
His arms stole about her.
"Speak to me! Speak to me!" she whispered with upturned face.
"Had I known that this would happen, I should have known that I did foolishly," he replied. "You should have known, dearest. You thought to kill our love by cutting it to earth. You have but made its roots grow deeper down into the present and the future!"
She nodded dreamily.
"Perchance you speak truth!" she said. "You see me here by your side, having crossed leagues and leagues to seek your soul, my home—my only home forever. And as surely as the bee goes back to its one hallowed oak have I refound you. And as surely as the ocean knows that every breath of vapor lifted from its face shall some day come back to its breast, so surely did you know that your love must return to you."
"Unless," he said, "it sinks into the unseen springs that are so deep that they are lost from sight forever."
"Lost—nothing is lost. The deepest water shall break out some day and reach the lake—the river. Then, why not now? I am one who cannot wait for eternity."
"And yet, eternity I fear, is waiting for us!"
There was a deep silence, lasting apace.
"Ah, I know," she said at last. "I know I ought to think as you do. I should be conscience stricken now, as I was then. I should be glad that you left me. But I am not—I am not. I am here, dearest, to ask you if you love me still?"—
"Love you?" he replied in a transport, holding her close, while he covered her eyes and her upturned face with kisses. "I love you as never woman was loved—as the night loves the dew in the cups of the upturned flowers—as the nightingale loves the dream that weaves its phantom webs about her bowers. I love you above everything in heaven or on earth. You knew the answer, dearest. Why did you ask?"
"I see it in your eyes. You love me still," she crooned, her beautiful white arms about his neck, "notwithstanding—"
He started. And yet, after the scene she had witnessed on that night, her doubts were but too well-founded. Yet she had not queried before.
"Strange fortunes crossed my path since I came here," he said. "Ambition lured—I followed, as one who lost his way. Would you have had me do otherwise?"
In his eyes she read the truth. Yet the shadow of that other woman had come between them as a phantom.
"Oh, no,—although I never thought that you were made for statecraft."
"I am in the service of the Senator. And the Senator of Rome is her foe."
"And you?"
"I am his servant."
She laughed nervously.
"I never thought you would come to this, my love."
"Nor ever should I have thought so. But fate is strange. The Holy Father is imprisoned in the Lateran. To him I wended my way. But the only service I did him was to prevent his escape—unwittingly. I visited the sanctuaries. But though prayers hovered on my lips, repentance was not in my heart. And then it came to pass. And I feel like one borne in a bark that has neither sail nor rudder. And if, instead of being far-floated to these Roman shores, I am headed for a port where all is security and peace, can I prevent it? I am borne on! I close my eyes and try to think that Fate has intended it for my good."
"For your good!" she said bitterly.
"For yours no less, perchance."
"How so, dearest? What good can come to me from your soul's security? To me, who believe our love is rightful?"
"And yet you sent me from you—into darkness—loneliness—despair?"
She stroked his hair.
"It was fear as well as conscience that prompted. You once said that all things are right, that may not be escaped. You said, that if God was at the back of all things, all things were pure—"
"I know I said it! But, what I meant, I know not now. I saw things strangely then."
"There were days when I, too, lost my vision," she said softly, "when I said to myself: there is truth and truth—the higher and the lower. It was the higher, if you like to call it so, Tristan, that prompted the deed. Since then I have come down to earth, and the lower truth, more fit for beings of clay, proclaims my presence here—"
"What will you do?" he queried anxiously.
"I know not—I know not! I came here to be with you—without ever a thought of meeting him again whom I have wronged—if wronged indeed I have. He has vowed to kill you! Oh, to what a pass have I brought you—my love—my love! Let us fly from Rome! Let us leave this city. He will never know. And as for me—he but loves me because I am fair to look upon, and lovable in the eyes of another. What I have suffered in the silence, in the darkness, you will never know. You shall take me with you—anywhere will I go—so we shake the dust of this city from our feet."
She leapt at him again and flung her arms about his neck, her face upturned. He had neither will nor power to release himself. He scarcely had the strength to speak the words which he knew would stab her to the heart.
Even ere he spoke she fell away from him as if she had read his mind.
"So you persuaded him of your repentance," she cried. "You are friends over the body of your murdered love! And I—who gave all—am left alone,—the foe of either. It was nobly done."
He stared at her as if he thought she had gone mad.
"Listen, Hellayne," he urged, taking her hands in his, in the endeavor to soothe her. "What spirit of evil has whispered this madness into your ears? Even just now you said, he has sworn to kill me. How could there be reconciliation between Roger de Laval and myself—who love his wife?"
"Then what is it?" she queried, her eyes upon his lips as if she were waiting sentence to be pronounced upon her.
"I am the Senator's man!"
The words fell upon her ears like the knell of doom.
"He will release you! I will go to him—if your pride is greater, than your love."
She was all woman now, deaf to reason and entreaty, thinking of nothing but her great love of him.
He drew her down beside him on the marble seat.
"Listen, Hellayne! You do not understand—you wrong me cruelly. Naught is there in this world that I would not do to make you happy—you, whose love and happiness are my one concern while life endures. But this thing may not be. The Senator of Rome is away on a pilgrimage. He has chosen me to watch over this city till his return. Danger lurks about me in every guise. Its nature I know not. But I do know that there is some dark power at work plotting evil. There is one I do not trust—the Lord Basil."
Hellayne gave a start.
"The bosom friend, so it would seem, of the Count Laval."
The color had left Tristan's face.
"You have met?"
"He appears to have taken a great liking to my lord. Almost daily does he call, and they seem to have some secret matter between them."
Tristan gripped Hellayne's hand so fiercely that she hardly suppressed an outcry.
"Have you surprised any utterance?"
"Only a name. They thought I was out of earshot."
"What name?"
"Theodora!"
She watched him narrowly as she spoke the word.
He gave a start.
"Theodora," Hellayne repeated slowly. "She who saved your life when my poor efforts failed."
There was a tinge of bitterness in her tone which did not escape Tristan's ear. Ere he could make reply, she followed it up with the question:
"What is there between you and her?"
"For aught I know it is some strange whim of the woman, call it infatuation if you will," he replied, "which, though I have repelled her, still maintains. It was at her feast I first met the Lord Roger face to face."
"How came you there?" she questioned with pained voice.
Tristan recounted the circumstances, concealing nothing from the time of his arrival in Rome to the present hour. Hellayne listened wearily, but the account he gave seemed rather to irritate than to reconcile her to him, who thus laid bare his heart before her.
"And so soon was I forgot?" she crooned.
"Never for a moment were you forgot, my Hellayne," he replied with all the fervor of persuasion at his command. "At all times have I loved you, at all times was your image enshrined in my heart. Theodora is all-powerful in Rome, as was Marozia before her. The magistrates, the officers of the Senator's court, are her creatures,—Basil no less than the rest. Would that the Lord Alberic returned, for the burden he has placed upon my shoulders is exceeding heavy. But you, my Hellayne, what will you do? I cannot bear the thought of knowing you with him who has wrecked your life, your happiness."
In Hellayne's blue eyes there was a great pain.
"Why mind such trifles since you but think of yourself?"
"You do not understand!" he protested. "Can I with honor abandon the trust which the Senator has imposed? What if the dreadful thing should happen? What if sudden sedition should sweep his power into the night of oblivion? Could I stand face to face with him, should he ask: 'How have you kept your trust?'"
Steps were approaching on the greensward.
Hellayne turned pale and Tristan's arm closed about her, determined to defend her to the death against whosoever should dare intrude.
Then it was as if some impalpable barrier had arisen between the man and the woman. It seemed the last hard malice of Fate to have brought them so near to what was not to be.
Hardly had Tristan drawn her throbbing bosom to his embrace when a dark shadow fell athwart their path and, looking up, he became aware of a forbidding form that stood hard by, wrapped in a black mantle that reached to his heels. From under a hood which was drawn over his face two beady eyes gleamed with smouldering fire, while the hooked nose gave the face the semblance of a bird of prey, which illusion the cruel mouth did little to dispel.
Hellayne, too, had seen this phantom of ill omen and was about to release herself from Tristan's arms, her face white as her robe, when the speech of the intruder arrested her movement.
"A message from the Lady Theodora."
A hot flush passed over Tristan's face, giving way to a deadly pallor as, hesitating to take the proffered tablet, he replied with ill-concealed vexation:
"Whom does the Lady Theodora honor by sending so ill-favored a messenger?"
The cowled figure fixed his piercing eyes first upon Tristan then upon Hellayne.
"The Lord Tristan will do well to pay heed to the summons, if he values that which lies nearest his heart."
But ere he, for whom the message was intended, could take it, Hellayne had snatched it from the messenger, had broken the seal and devoured its contents by the light of the moon which made the night as bright as day.
Then, with a shrill laugh, she cast it at Tristan's feet and, ere the latter could recover himself, both the woman and the messenger had gone and he stood alone in the bosquet of roses, vainly calling the name of her who had left him without a word to his misery and despair.
The palace of Theodora on Mount Aventine was aglow with life and movement for the festivities of the evening. The lights of countless cressets were reflected from the marble floor of the great reception hall and shone on the rich panelling, and the many-hued tapestries which decked the walls.
In the shadow of the little marble kiosk which rose, a relic of a happier age, among oleander and myrtles, shadowed by tall cypresses, silent guardians of the past, Theodora and Basil faced each other. The white, livid face of the man gave testimony to the passions that consumed him, as his burning gaze swept the woman before him.
"I have spoken, my Lord Basil! Should some unforeseen mischance befall him I have summoned hither, look to it that I require not his blood at your hands."
Theodora's tone silenced all further questioning. After a pause she continued: "And if you desire farther proof that this man shall not stand against my enchantments, pass into yonder kiosk and through its carven windows shall you be able to witness all that passes between us."
She ceased with quivering lips, the while Basil regarded her from under half-shut lids, filled with sudden brooding, and for a space there was silence. At last he said in a low, unsteady voice:
"So I did not err when my hatred rose against this puppet of the Senator's, who came to Rome to do penance for a kiss. You love him, your foe, while I, your utter slave, must stand by and, with aching heart, see your mad desire bring all our schemes to naught."
His hand closed on his dagger hilt, but Theodora's eyes flashed like bared swords as with set face she said:
"Fool!—to see but that which lies in your path, not the intricate nets which are spread in the darkness. I mean to make this man my very own! His fevered lips shall close on mine, and in my embrace he shall climb to the heaven of the Gods. He shall be mine! He shall do my bidding utterly. He shall open for me the gates of the Emperor's Tomb. He shall stand beside me when I am proclaimed mistress of Rome! For my love he shall defy the world that is—and the world that is not."
"And what of the woman he loves?" Basil snarled venomously, and the pallor of Theodora's face informed him that the arrow he had sped had hit the mark.
She held out her wonderful statuesque arms, then, raising herself to her full height, she said:
"Is the pale woman from his native land a match for me? What rare sport it shall be to make of this Hellayne a mock, and of her name a memory, and put Theodora's in its high place. Do you doubt my power to do as I say?"
"Verily I do believe that you love this pilgrim," Basil said sullenly. "And while I am preparing the quake that shall tumble Alberic's dominion into dust and oblivion, you are making him the happiest of mortals. And deem you I will stand by and see yon dotard reap the fruits of my endeavors and revel where I, your slave, am starving for a look?"
"Well have you chosen the word, my lord—my slave! For then were Theodora indeed the puppet of a lust-bitten subject did she heed his mad ravings and his idle plaints. Know, my lord, that my love is his to whom I choose to give it, his who gives to me that in return which I desire. And though I have drunk deep of the goblet of passion, never has my heart beat one jot the faster, nor has the fire in my soul been kindled until I met him whom this night I have summoned."
"And deem you, fairest Theodora, that the sainted pilgrim will come?" Basil interposed with an evil leer.
An inscrutable smile curved Theodora's crimson lips.
"Let that be my affair, my lord, but—that everything may be clear between us—know this: when I summoned him, after he had spurned me on the night when I intended to make him the happiest of men, it was to torture him, to make a mock of him, to arouse his passions till they overmastered all else, till in very truth he forgot his God, his honor, and the woman for whose kisses he does such noble penance—but now—"
"But now?" came the echo from Basil's lips.
"Who says I shall not?" Theodora replied with her inscrutable smile. "Who shall gainsay me? You—my lord?"
There was a strange light in Basil's eyes, kindled by her mockery.
"And when he kneels at your feet, drunk with passion—laying bare his soul in his mad infatuation—who shall prevent this dagger from drinking his heart's blood, even as he peers into the portals of bliss?"
Theodora's eyes flashed lightnings.
"I shall kill you with my own hands, if you but dare but touch one hair of his head," she said with a calm that was more terrible than any outburst of rage would have been. "He is mine, to do with as I choose, and look well to it, my lord, that your shadow darken not the path between us.—Else I shall demand of you such a reckoning as none who may hear of it in after days shall dare thwart Theodora—either in love or in hate."
Basil's writhing form swayed to and fro; passion-tossed he tried in vain to speak when she raised her hand.
With a gesture of baffled wrath and rage Basil bowed low. A sudden light leaped into his eyes as he raised her hand to his lips. Then he retreated into the shadow of the kiosk.
A moment later Tristan came within view, walking as one in a trance. Mechanically he passed towards the banquet hall. Then he paused, seeming to wait for some signal from within.
A hand stole into his and drew him resistlessly into the shadows.
"Why do you linger here? Behold where the moonlight calls."
"Where is your mistress?" Tristan turned to the Circassian.
A strange smile played on Persephoné's lips.
"She awaits you in yonder kiosk," she replied, edging close to him. "Take care you do not thwart her though—for to-day she strikes to kill."
"It is well," Tristan replied. "It must come, and will be no more torture now than any other time."
Persephoné gave a strange smile, then she led him through a cypress avenue, at the remote end of which the marble kiosk gleamed white in the moonlight.
Pointing to it with white outstretched arm she gave him a mock bow and returned to the palace.
His lips grimly set, Tristan, insensible to the beauty of the summer night, strode down the flower-bordered path. Woven sheets of silvery moonlight, insubstantial and unreal, lay upon the greensward. The sounds of distant lutes and harps sank down through the hot air. The sky was radiant with the magic lustre of a great white moon, suspended like an alabaster lamp in the deep azure overhead. Her rays invaded the sombre bosquets, lighted the trellised rose-walks and cast into bold relief against the deep shadows of palm and ilex many feathery fountain sprays, crowning flower-filled basins of alabaster with whispering coolness.
The path was strewn with powdered sea shells and bordered on either side with rare plants, filling the air with exquisite perfume. Between thickets of yellow tufted mimosa and leafy bowers of acacia shimmered the crystal surface of the marble cinctured lake, tinted with pale gold and shrouded by pearl-hued vapors.—Pink and white myrtles, golden-hued jonquils, rainbow tinted chrysanthema, purple rhododendrons, iris, lilac and magnolia mingled their odors in an almost disconcerting orgy, and rare orchids raised their glowing petals with tropical gorgeousness from vases of verdigris bronze in the moonlight.
At the entrance of the marble kiosk, there stood the immobile form of a woman, half hidden behind a cluster of blooming orchids.
The silver light of the moon fell upon the pale features of Theodora. Her gaze was fixed upon the dark avenue of cypress trees, through which Tristan was swiftly approaching.
She stood there waiting for him, clad in misty white, like the moonbeams, yet the byssus of her garb was no whiter than was the throat that rose from the faultless trunk of her body, no whiter than her wonderful hands and arms.
Tristan's lips tightened. He had come to claim the scarf and dagger. To-night should end it all. There was no place in his life for this woman whose beauty would be the undoing of him who gave himself up to its fatal spell.
As he stood before her, a gleam of moonlight on his broad shoulders, Theodora felt the blood recede to her heart, the while she gazed on his set, yet watchful face. His silence seemed to numb her faculties and her voice sounded strange as, extending her hand, she said:
"Welcome, my Lord Tristan."
He bowed low, barely touching the soft white fingers.
"The Lady Theodora has been pleased to summon me and I have obeyed. I am here to claim the dagger which was taken from me and the scarf of blue samite."
Theodora glanced at him for a moment, the blood drumming in her ears and driving a coherent answer from her mind, while Tristan met her gaze without flinching, with the memory of Hellayne in his heart.
"Presently will I reveal this matter to you, my Lord Tristan," she said at last. "Meanwhile sit you here beside me—for the night is hot, and I have waited long for your coming."
For a moment Tristan hesitated, then he took his seat beside her on the marble bench, his brain afire, as he mused on all the treachery her soft bosom held.
"You look strangely at me, Tristan," she said in a low tone, dropping all formality, "almost as if it gave you pain to sit beside me. Yet I cannot think that a man like you has never rested beside a beautiful woman in an hour of solitude and passion."
A laugh, soft as the music of the Castalian fountain, fell on Tristan's ear, but as he sat without answer, she continued, her face very close to his:
"Strange, indeed, my words may sound in your ears, Tristan—and yet—can it be that you are blind as well as deaf to the call of the Goddess of Love, who rules us all?"
She paused, her lips ajar, her eyes alight with a strange fire, such as he had seen therein on the night in the sunken gardens, beyond the glimmering lake.
"And what have I to give to you, Lady Theodora," he said at length. "What can you expect from me, the giving of which would not turn my honor to disgrace and my strength to water?"
At his words she rose up and, towering her glorious womanhood above him, glided behind the marble bench and, leaning hot hands upon his shoulders, bent low her head, till strands of perfumed hair rested on his tense features.
"Do you love power, Tristan?" she said with low, yet vibrant voice. "I tell you that, if you give yourself to me, there are no heights to which the lover of Theodora may not climb. The way lies open from camp to palace, from sword to sceptre, and, though the aim be high, at least it is worth the risk. Steep is the path, but, though attainment seems impossible, I tell you it is the wings of love that shall raise you and bid you soar to flights of glory and rapture. I offer you a kingdom, if you will but lay your sword at my feet and yet more besides, for, Tristan, I offer you myself."
The perfumed head bent lower and the scented cloud fell more thickly upon him as he sat there, dazed and enchanted out of all powers of resistance by the misty sapphire eyes that gleamed amid it, and seemed to drag his soul from out of him. Now his head was pillowed on her soft bosom and her white arms were about him, while lingering kisses burnt on his unresponsive lips, when suddenly she faced round with a cry, for there, directly before them in the clearing, stood a woman, whose gleaming white robe, untouched by any color, save that of the violet band that bound it round her shoulders, seemed one with the sun-kissed hair, tied into a simple knot.
Hellayne stood there as if deprived of motion, her blue eyes wide with horror and pain, her curved lips parted, as if to speak, though no sound came from them, until Tristan turned and, as their glances met, he gave a strangled groan and buried his face in his hands.
Theodora stood immobile, with blazing eyes and terrible face, then she clapped her hands twice and at the sound two eunuchs appeared and stood motionless awaiting their mistress' behest. For apace there was silence, while Theodora glanced from the one to the other, quivering from head to foot with the violence of the passion that possessed her, casting anon a glance at Tristan who stood silent, with bowed head.
At length she glided up to him and, as she laid her two white hands on his broad shoulders, Tristan shuddered and felt a longing to make an end of all her evil beauty and devilish cunning. Then, deliberately, she took the scarf of blue samite, which lay beside her and put her foot upon it.
"This is very precious to you, Tristan, is it not?" she said in her sweet voice, while her witching eyes sank into his. "I was about to tell you how you might serve me, and deserve all the happiness that is in store for you when I was interrupted by the appearance of this woman. Can you tell me, who she is, and why she is regarding you so strangely?"
As she spoke she turned slowly towards Hellayne whose face was pale as death.
A spasm of rage shook Tristan, at the sight of the woman who regarded him out of wide, pitiful eyes, but even as he longed to pierce the heart of her who was striving to wreck all he held dear, Odo of Cluny's warning seemed to clear his brain of the rage and hate that was clouding it, and in that instant he knew, if he played his part, he held in his hand the last throw in the dread game, of which Rome was the pawn.
"In all things will I do your bidding, Lady Theodora,—for who can withstand your beauty and your enchantment?" said a voice that seemed not part of himself.
Theodora turned to Hellayne.
"You have heard the words the Lord Tristan has spoken," she said in veiled tone of mockery. "Tell me now, did you not know that I was engaged upon matters of state when you intruded yourself into our presence?"
For a moment the blue eyes of Hellayne flashed swords with the dark orbs of Theodora. There was a silence and the two women read each other's inmost thoughts, Hellayne meeting Theodora's contemptuous scorn with the keen look of one who has seen her peril and has nerved herself to meet it.
To Tristan she did not even vouchsafe a glance.
"I followed one, perjured and forsworn," she said in tones that cut Tristan's very soul, while a look of immeasurable contempt flashed from her blue eyes. "You are welcome to him, Lady Theodora. I do not even envy you his memory."
Ere Theodora could reply, Hellayne, with a choking sob, turned and fled down the moonlit path like some hunted thing, and ere either realized what had happened she had vanished in the night.
Tristan, dreading the worst, his soul bruised in its innermost depths, cursing himself for having permitted any consideration except Hellayne's life to interfere with his preconceived plans, started to follow, when Theodora, guessing his purpose, suddenly barred his way.
Ere he could prevent, she had thrown her arms about him and her face upturned to his stormy brow she whispered deliriously, utterly oblivious of two eyes that burnt from their sockets like live coals:
"I love you! I love you!" and her whole being seemed ablaze with the fire of an all-devouring passion. "Tristan, I love you with a love so idolatrous, that I could slay you with these hands rather than be spurned, be denied by you. Love me Tristan—love me! And I shall give you such love in return as mortals have never known. I am as one in a trance—I cannot see—I cannot think! I, the woman born to command—am begging—imploring—I care not what you do with me—what becomes of me. Take me!—I am yours—body and soul!"
Her face was lighted up by the pale rays of the moon. But, though his senses were steeped in a delirium that almost took from him his manhood, the gloom but deepened on Tristan's brow, while with moist hungry lips she kissed him, again and again.
At last, seemingly on the verge of merging his whole being into her own, he succeeded in extricating himself from the steely coils of those white arms.
"Lady Theodora," he said in cold and constrained tones, "I am too poor to return even in part such priceless favors of the Lady Theodora's love!"
Stung in her innermost soul by his words, trembling from head to foot with the violence of her emotions, she panted in a passion of anger and shame.
"You dare? This to me? Since then you will not love me—take this—"
Above him, in her hand, gleamed his own unsheathed dagger.
Tristan with a supple movement caught the white wrist and wrenched the weapon from her.
"The Lady Theodora is always true to herself," he said with cutting irony, retreating from her in the direction of the lake.
She threw out her arms.
"Tristan—Tristan—forgive me! Come back—I am not myself."
He paused.
"And were you Aphrodite, I should spurn your love,—I should refuse to kiss the lips, which a slave, a churl has defiled."
"You spurn me," she laughed deliriously. "Perchance, you are right. And yet," she added in a sadder tone, "how often does fate but grant us the dream and destroy the reality. Go—ere I forget, and do what I may repent of. Go! My brain is on fire. I know not what I am saying. Go!"
As Tristan turned without response, a gleam of deadly hatred shone from her eyes. For a long time she stood motionless by the kiosk, staring as one in a trance down the long cypress avenue, whose shadows had swallowed up Tristan's retreating form.
The spectral rays of the moon broke here and there through the dense, leafy canopy, and dream-like the distant sounds of harps and flutes were wafted through the stillness of the starlit southern night.
The appearance of Basil who had emerged from the kiosk and regarded Theodora with a look in his pale, passion distorted features that seemed to light up recesses in his own heart and soul which he himself had never fathomed, caused the woman to turn. But she looked at the man with an almost unknowing stare. Notwithstanding a self-control which she rarely lost, she had not found herself. The incredible had happened. When she seemed absolutely sure of the man, he had denied her. Her ruse had been her undoing. For Hellayne's presence had been neither accidental, nor had Hellayne herself brought it about. The messenger who had summoned Tristan had skillfully absolved both commissions. He was to have brought the woman to the tryst, that she might, with her own eyes, witness her rival's triumph. In her flight she had vanquished Theodora.
Stealthily as a snake moves in the grass, Basil came nearer and nearer. When he had reached Theodora's side he took the white hand and raised it, unresisting, to his lips. His eyes sought those of the woman, but a moment or two elapsed ere she seemed even to note his presence.
He bent low. There was love, passion, adoration in his eyes and there was more. Theodora had over-acted her part. He had seen the fire in her eyes and he knew. It was more than the determination to make Tristan pliable to her desires in the great hour when she was to enter Castel San Angelo as mistress of Rome. He saw the abyss that yawned at his own feet, and in that moment two resolves had shaped themselves in Basil's mind, shadowy, but gaining definite shape with each passing moment, and, while his fevered lips touched Theodora's hand, all the evil passions in his nature leaped into his brain.
Suddenly Theodora, glancing down at him, as if she for the first time noted his presence, spoke.
"Acknowledge, my lord, that I have attained my ends! For, had it not been for the appearance of that woman, I should have conquered—ay—conquered beyond a doubt."
But when she looked at him she hardly recognized in him the man she knew, so terribly had rage and jealousy distorted his countenance.
"How can I gainsay that you have conquered, fairest Theodora," he said, "when I heard the soft accents of your endearments and your panting breath, as you drowned his soul in fiery kisses? 'Tis but another poor fool swallowed up in the unsatisfied whirlpool of your desires, another victim marked for the holocaust that is to be. But why did the Lady Theodora cry out and bring the tender love scene to a close all unfinished?"
"By pale Hekaté, I had almost forgot the woman! Why did I permit her to go without strangling her on the spot?" she cried, the growing anger which the man's speech had aroused, brought to white heat in the reminder.
"The honor of being strangled by the fair hands of the Lady Theodora may be great," sneered Basil. "Yet I question if the Lady Hellayne would submit without a struggle even to so fair an opponent."
"Why do you taunt me?" Theodora flashed.
"Why?" he cried. "Because I witnessed another reaping the fruit of the deeds I have sown—another stealing from me the love of the woman I have possessed,—one, too, held in silken bondage by another's wife. Rather would I plunge this knife into my own heart and—"
Theodora's bosom heaved convulsively.
"Put up your dagger, my lord," she said, with a wave of her hand. "For, ere long, it shall drink its fill. Strange it is that I—the like of whose beauty, as they tell me, is not on earth—should be conquered by a woman from the North—that the fires of the South should be quenched by Northern ice. I could almost wish that matters had run differently between her and myself, for she is brave, else had she not faced me as she did."
"What else can you look for, Lady Theodora, from one sprung from such a race?" replied the man sullenly. "I tell you, Lady Theodora, if you do not ward yourself against her, she will vanquish you utterly, body and soul."
"The future shall decide between us. I am still Theodora, and it will go hard with you, if you interpret my will according to your own desires. I foresee that we shall have need of all our resources when the hour tolls that shall see Theodora set upon the throne that is her own, and then—let deeds speak, not words."
"Since when have you found occasion to doubt the sureness of my blade, Lady Theodora?" answered Basil, a dark look in his furtive eyes.
"Peace, my lord!" interposed Theodora. "Why do you raise up the ghost of that which has been between us? Bury the past, for the last throw that is in the hands of destiny ends the game which has been played round this city of Rome these many weary days."
"And had you, Theodora, of a truth won over this Tristan," came the dark reply, "so that one hour's delight in your arms would have caused him to forget the world about him—what of me who has given to you the love, the devotion of a slave?"
At the words Theodora flung wide her shimmering arms and cried:
"I tell you, my lord, that as I hold you and every man captive on whom my charms have fallen, so shall I hold in chains the soul of this Tristan, even though he resist—to the last."
"Full well do I know the potency of your spell," answered Basil with lowering eyes, "and, I doubt me, if such is the case. Nevertheless, I warn you, Lady Theodora, not to place too great a share of this desperate venture on the shoulders of one you have never proved."
A contemptuous smile curved Theodora's lips as she rose from her seat. With a single sweep her draperies fell from her like mist from a snow-clad peak, and for the space of a moment there was silence, broken only by Basil's panting breath. At last Theodora spoke.
"Man's honor is so much chaff for the burning, when the darts of love pierce his brain. With beauty's weapons I have fought before, and once again the victory shall be mine!"
There was an ominous light in Basil's eyes.
"Beware, lest the victory be not purchased with the blood of one whom your fickleness has chosen to sit in the empty seat of the discarded. At the bidding of a mad passion have you been defeated."
A flood of words surged irresistibly to Basil's lips, but at the sight of Theodora's set face the words froze in the utterance. But when the woman stared into space, her face showing no sign that she had even heard his speech, he continued:
"And when you are stretched out on a bed of torment and call for death to ease your pain, let the bitterest pang be that, had you enlisted my blade and cherished the devotion I bore you, this night's work would have set the seal of victory on our perilous venture."
"Blinded I have been," said Theodora, a strange light leaping to her eyes, "to all the devotion which now I begin to fathom more clearly. Answer me then, my lord! Is it only to slake the pangs of mad jealousy that you taunt me with words which no man has dared to speak—and live?"
The sheen of a drawn dagger flashed above his head. Basil faced the death that lurked in Theodora's uplifted arm and he replied in an unmoved voice:
"Lady Theodora, if you harbor one single doubt in your mind of him who has worked your will on those you consigned to their doom and laid their proud heads low in the dust of the grave, let your blade descend and quit me according to what I have deserved. Nay—Lady Theodora," he continued, as her white arm still hovered tense above him, "it is quite evident your love I never had, your trust I have lost! Therefore send my soul to the dim realms of the underworld, for I have no longer any desire for life."
He was gazing up at her with eyes full of passionate devotion, when of a sudden the blade dropped from her grasp, tinkling on the stone beneath, and, burying her face in her hands, Theodora burst into an agony of tears that shook her form with piteous sobbing.
"By all the saints, dear lady, weep not," Basil pleaded, placing gentle hands upon her shoulders. "Rather let your dagger do its work and drink my blood, than that grief should thus undo you."
"Truly had some evil spirit entered into me," she spoke at length in broken accents, "else had I not so madly suspected one whose devotion to me has never wavered. Can you forgive me, my lord, most trusted and doubted of my friends?"
With a fierce outcry the man cast himself at her feet, and, bending low, kissed her hands, while, in tones, hoarse with passion, he stammered:
"Let me then prove my love, Lady Theodora, most beautiful of all women on earth! Set the task! Show me how to win back that which I have lost! Let me become your utter slave."
And, so saying, he swept the unresisting woman into his grasp, and as her body lay motionless against his breast the sight of her lips so close to his own sent the hot blood hurtling through his fevered brain.
Theodora shuddered in his embrace.
He kissed her, again and again, and her wet lips roused in him all the demoniacal passions of his nature.
"Speak," he stammered, "what must I do to prove to you the love which is in my heart—the passion that burns my soul to crisp, as the fires of hell the souls of the damned?"
Theodora's eyes were closed, as if she hesitated to speak the words that her lips had framed. He, Tristan, had brought her to this pass. He had denied, insulted her, he had made a mock of her in the eyes of this man, who was kneeling at her feet, bond slave of his passions. By his side no task would have seemed too great of accomplishment. And whatever the fruits of her plotting he was to have shared them. How she hated him; and how she hated that woman who had come between them. As for him whose stammering words of love tumbled from his drunken lips, Theodora could have driven her poniard through his heart without wincing in the act.
"If you love me then, as you say," she whispered at last, "revenge me on him who has put this slight upon me!"
A baleful light shone in Basil's eyes.
"He dies this very night."
She raised her hands with a shudder.
"No—no! Not a quick death! He would die as another changes his garment—with a smile.—No! Not a quick death! Let him live, but wish he were dead a thousand times. Strike him through his honor. Strike him through the woman he loves."
For a pace Basil was silent. Could Theodora have read his thoughts at this moment the weapon would not have dropped from her nerveless grasp.
"Ah!" he said, and a film seemed to pass over his eyes in the utterance. "There is nothing that shall be left undone—through his honor—through the woman he loves."
She utterly abandoned herself to him now, suffering his endearments and kisses like a thing of stone and thereby rousing his passions to their highest pitch. She could have strangled him like a poisonous reptile that defiled her body, but, after having suffered his embrace for a time, she suddenly shook herself free of him.
"My lord—what of our plans? How much longer must I wait ere the clarions announce to Rome that the Emperor's Tomb harbors a new mistress? What of Alberic? What of Hassan Abdullah, the Saracen?"
Basil was regarding her with a mixture of savage passion, doubt, incredulity and something like fear.
"The death-hounds are on Alberic's scent," he said at last, with an effort to steady his voice, and hold in leash his feelings, which threatened to master him, as his eyes devoured the woman's beauty.—"Hassan Abdullah is even now in Rome."
"Can we rely upon him and his Saracens when the hour tolls that shall see Theodora mistress of Rome?"
"Weighing a sack of gold against the infidel's treachery, it is safe to predict that the scales will tip in favor of the bribe—so it be large enough."
"Be lavish with him, and if his heart be set on other matters—"
She paused, regarding the man with an inscrutable look. Shrewd as he was, he caught not its meaning.
"Why not entrust to his care the Lady Hellayne?"
The devilish suggestion seemed to find not as enthusiastic a reception as she had anticipated.
"After having seen the Lady Theodora," Basil said, his eyes avoiding those of the woman, "I fear the Lady Hellayne will appear poor in Hassan Abdullah's eyes."
Theodora had grown pensive.
"I do not think so. To me she seemed like a snow-capped volcano. All ice without, all fire within. Perchance I should bow to your better judgment, my lord, and perchance to Hassan Abdullah's, whose good taste in preferring the Lady Theodora cannot be gainsaid. But, our guests are becoming impatient. Take me to the palace."
Basil barred the woman's way.
"And when you have reached the summit of your desire, will you remember certain nuptials consummated in a certain chamber in the Emperor's Tomb, between two placed as we are and mated as we?"
Theodora's lips curved in one of those rare smiles which brought him to whom she gave it to her feet, her abject slave.
"I shall remember, my lord," she said, and, linking her arm in his, they strode towards the palace.