"Surely so peerless an enchantress, with admirers so numerous, cannot find it worth her while to add a new worshipper to the idolatrous throng?" he answered.
"Ah! Little you know," she murmured indolently, with a touch of cold disdain in her accents. "My worshippers are my puppets, my slaves! There is not a man amongst them," she added, raising her voice, "not a man! They kiss the hand that spurns their touch! As for you," she added, leaning forward, so that the dark shower of her hair brushed his cheek and her drowsy eyes sank into his own, "As for you—you are from the North.—I love a nature of strongly repressed and concentrated passion, of a proud and chilly temper. Like our volcanoes they wear crowns of ice, but fires unquenchable smother in their depths. And—might not at a touch from the destined hand the flame in your heart leap forth uncontrolled?"
Eckhardt met the enchantress' look with one of mingled dread and intoxication. She smiled, and raising a goblet of wine to her lips, kissed the brim and gave it to him with an indescribably graceful swaying gesture of her whole form, which resembled a tall white lily bending to the breeze. He seized the cup eagerly and drank thirstily from it. Again her magic voice, more melodious than the sounds of Æolian harps thrilled his ears and set his pulses to beating madly.
"But you have not yet told me," she whispered, while her head drooped lower and lower, till her dark fragrant tresses touched his brow, "you have not yet told me that you love me?"
Was it the purple wine that was so heavy on his senses? Heavier was the drowsy spell of the enchantress' eyes. Eckhardt started up. His heart ached with the memory of Ginevra, and a dull pang shot through his soul. But the spell that was upon him was too heavy to be broken by human effort. Nothing short of the thunder of Heaven could save him now.
Theodora's words chimed in his ear, while her hands clasped his own with their soft, electrifying touch. With a supreme effort he endeavoured to shake off the spell, into whose ravishment he was being slowly but surely drawn, his efforts at resistance growing more feeble and feeble every moment.
Again the voice of the Siren sent its musical cadence through his brain in the fateful question:
"Do you love me?"
Eckhardt attempted to draw back, but could not.
Entwining her body with his arms, he devoured her beauty with his eyes. From the crowning masses of her dusky hair, over the curve of her white shoulders and bosom, down to the blue-veined feet in the glistening sandals, his gaze wandered hungrily, searchingly, passionately. His heart beat with wild, mad desire, but, though his lips moved, no words were audible.