"He has laid his whole soul bare to me; not a thought therein, ever so remote, which I have not sounded. I can not stand before him. My brow is crimsoned with the flush of shame. He gave me truth for a lie,—friendship for deceit. He deserves a better fate than the Senator of Rome has decreed for him."
Crescentius breathed hard.
"The weakness does you honour," he replied after a pause. "Perchance I should have spared you the task. I placed him in your hands, because I dared trust no one else. And now it is too late—too late!"
"It is not too late," replied Stephania.
Crescentius pointed silently to the ramparts, where a score of men were placing a huge catapult in position.
"It is not too late!" she repeated, her cheeks alternately flushing and paling. "To-day, my lord informed me, the King stands at the Rubicon. To-day he must choose, If it is to be Rome, if Aix-la-Chapelle. If he elects to return to the gray gloom of his northern skies, to the sombre twilight of his northern forests, let him go, my lord,—let him go! Much misery will be thereby averted,—much heart-rending despair!"
Crescentius had listened in silence to Stephania's pleading. There was a brief pause, during which only his heavy breathing was heard.
"His choice is made," he replied at last in a firm tone.
"I do not understand you, my lord!"
The Senator regarded his wife with singularly fixed intentness.