One devouring look—and forgetting all fear and warning and all presence of mind he rushed towards that flashing danger-signal of beauty, that seemed to burn the very air encompassing it, that living image of his dead wife, and with wild eyes, outstretched arms and breathless utterance, he cried: "Ginevra!"
She whom he thus called turned toward him, as he came with the air of a madman upon her, and her marvellous loveliness, as she raised her dark eyes questioningly to his, checked his impetuous haste, held him tongue-tied, bewildered and unmanned.
And truly, nothing more beautiful in the shape of woman could be imagined than she. Her fairness was of that rare and subtle type which has in all ages overwhelmed reason, blinded judgment and played havoc with the passions of men.
Well did she know her own surpassing charm and thoroughly did she estimate the value of her fatal power to lure and to madden and to torture all whom she chose to make the victim of her almost resistless attraction. Her hair, black as night, was arranged loosely under a jewelled coif. Her eyes, large and brilliant, shone from under brows delicately arched. Her satin skin was of the creamy, colourless, Southern type, in startling contrast to the brilliant scarlet of the small bewitching mouth.
Beautiful and delicate as the ensemble was, there was in that enchanting face a lingering expression, which a woman would have hated and a man would have feared.
"Ginevra!" Eckhardt cried, then he checked himself, for, her large eyes, suddenly cold as the inner silence of the sea, surveyed him freezingly, as though he were some insolently obtrusive stranger. But her face was pale as that of a corpse.
"Ginevra!" he faltered for the third time, his senses reeling and he no longer master of himself. "Surely you know me—Eckhardt,—him whose name you have just called! Speak to me, Ginevra—speak! By all the love I have borne for you—speak, Ginevra,—speak!"
A shadow flitted through the background and paused behind Theodora's couch. Neither had seen it, though Theodora shuddered as if she had felt the strange presence of something uncalled, unbidden.
A strange light of mockery, or of annoyance, gleamed in the woman's eyes. Her crimson lips parted, showing two rows of even, small white teeth, then a gleam of amusement shot athwart her face, raising the delicately pencilled corners of the eye-brows, as she broke into a soft peal of careless mocking laughter.
"I am not Ginevra," she said. "Who is Ginevra? I am Theodora—the Queen of Love."