“Will you hear me confess?” she asked. “All my beautiful sins that I cannot tell the priest? All we did in those days of youth before this dimness at Ferrara?”
“Confess to God,” he answered, trembling violently.
Lucrezia drew nearer.
“All the secrets Cesare taught me,” she whispered. “Shall I make you heir to them?”
“Christ save me,” he said, “from the Duke of Valentinois’ secrets!”
“Who taught you to fear my family?” she questioned with a cunning accent. “Will you hear how the Pope feasted with his Hebes and Ganymedes? Will you hear how we lived in the Vatican?”
Orsini tried to shake her arm off; anger rose to equal his fear.
“Weed without root or flower, fruitless uselessness!” he said hoarsely. “Let me free of your spells!”
She loosed his arm and seemed to recede from him without movement; the plasters round her head showed ghastly white, and he saw all the wrinkles round her drooped lips and the bleached ugliness of her bare throat.
“Will you not hear of Rome?” she insisted in a wailing whisper. He fled from her, crashing through the bushes.