"The fallen angels," was her smiling reply.
Then with a quick, spontaneous movement she flung her bare arms round his neck and drew him toward her.
"And if I did come toward you to prophesy glory and the fulfilment of your dreams?" she murmured, even as a sibyl. "You alone are alive among the dead! What matters it to me that your love is hopeless, that our wings are seared? My love is all for the rejected! I love the proud and solitary eagle better than the stained vulture."
He felt the fire of the strange insatiate kiss of her lips and reeled. It seemed as if the Goddess of Love in the translucence of the moon, had descended, embracing him, mocking to scorn the anguish that consumed his heart, but to vanish again in the lunar shadows.
"Stephania—" he murmured reeling, drunk with the sweetness of her lips.
Never perhaps had the beautiful Roman bestowed on mortal man such a glance, as now beamed from her eyes upon the youth. The perfume of her hair intoxicated his senses. Her breath was on his cheek, her sweet lips scarce a hand's breath from his own.
Had Lucifer, the prince of darkness, himself appeared at this moment, or Crescentius started up like a ghost from the gaping stone floor, Stephania could scarcely have changed as suddenly as she did, to the cold impassive rigidity of marble. Following the direction of her stony gaze, Otto beheld emerging as it were from the very rocks above him a dark face and mailed figure, which he recognized as Eckhardt's. Whether or not the Margrave was conscious of having thus unwittingly interrupted an interview,—if he had seen, his own instincts at once revealed to him the danger of his position. Eckhardt's countenance wore an expression of utter unconcern, as he passed on and vanished in the darkness.
For a moment Otto and Stephania gazed after his retreating form.
"He has seen nothing," Otto reassured her.
"To-morrow," she replied, "we meet here again at the hour of the Angelas. And then," she added changing her tone to one of deepest tenderness, "I will test your love,—your constancy,—your loyalty."