"The toils of the Siren Rome are too firm to be snapped asunder like a spider's web."
She covered her face with her hands. Her breath came and went with quick, convulsive gasps.
"It is shameful—shameful—" she sobbed. "Had I never lent myself to the unworthy task! How could you conceive it, my lord, how could you? But it was not your counsel! May his right hand wither, who whispered the thought into your ear!"
Crescentius winced. He felt ill at ease.
"Is it so hard to play the confessor to yonder wingless cherub?" he said with a forced smile.
Stephania straightened herself to her full height.
"When I undertook the shameless task, I believed the son of Theophano a tyrant, an oppressor, his hands stained with the best of Roman blood! Such your lying Roman chroniclers had painted him. I gloried in the thought, to humble a barbarian, whose vain-glorious, boastful insolence meditated new outrages upon us Romans. Yet his is a purer, a loftier spirit, than is to be found in all this Rome of yours! Were it not nobler to acknowledge him your liege, than to destroy him by woman's wiles and smiles?"
"I cannot answer you on these points," Crescentius spoke after a pause, during which the olive tints of his countenance had faded to ashen hues. "I regard those dreams, whose mock-halo has blinded you, in a different light. It is the wise man who rules the state,—it is the dreamer who dashes it to atoms. We have gone too far! I could not release you,—even if I would!"
Stephania breathed hard. Her hands were tightly clasped.
"It can bring glory to neither you, nor Rome," she said in a pleading voice. "Let him depart in peace, my lord, and I will thank you to my dying hour!"