Through the round window the crimson glow shone like the flames of the Day of Judgment upon the evil beings caught in the midst of their sins.
When Carinus showed the ring, he was conducted without delay to Glyceria's apartments.
The palace already stood wrapped in silence and darkness. Carinus felt rustling garments brush him in the corridors, soft hands guided him and, amid low laughter, led him through quiet rooms until at last he clasped a hand at whose electric pressure his blood began to seethe, and a familiar voice faltered with a tenderness never heard before:
"Manlius! So you came?"
It was Glyceria—cruelly deceived Glyceria.
"I expected you, and yet I hoped you would not come," she whispered softly. "Do you feel the tremour of my hand in your clasp? It is quivering with love and fear. Love robbed me of my senses. One word of tenderness from your lips made my soul your slave—all that, during my whole life, I had concentrated in a single thought, the goal of my longing which I had never hoped to possess, the joy of which I had always dreamed, but never hoped would be mine—I now embrace! I do not understand it. This is not the day or the hour in which we ought to speak of love, but you mentioned it, and can the woman who loves choose the hour for answering the question?"
Carinus stole the caresses of the loving woman.
"Yet, O Manlius! I trembled lest you might come only to mock me, only to play a cruel game with me, obtain the deepest secrets of my heart and then jeer at me for them. No. You cannot do that. You cannot trample in the dust the only feeling which I have kept unsullied amid the ruin of my life. Can you hate me because I love you? And if you hate me, would you not slay, rather than mock me?"
Carinus silently drew the trembling figure toward him and covered her cheeks and lips with fervent kisses.