A clock boomed from a neighbouring tower. The heavy measured clang vibrated long through the stillness, quivering In the air, like a warning knell of fate.
Softly she drew him into the dusk of the pagan temple, drew him down beside her on one of the scattered fragments of antiquity, a dog-eared God of black Syenite from Egypt, which had shared the fate of its Latin equals.
But he could not sit beside—her.
Abruptly he rose; standing before her, the passion of the long fight surged up in him. Stephania sat motionless, and for a time neither spoke.
At last Otto broke the silence. His voice was strained as if he were suffering some great pain.
"I have come!" he said. "I have cut every bridge between present and past! I am here.—Have you thought of my appeal?"
"Oh, why do you torture me?" she replied half sobbing, "I venture to ask for a delay, and you arraign me as though I stood at the bar of judgment."
"It is our day of judgment," he replied. "It is the day when life confronts us with our own deeds,—when we must answer for them, when we must justify them. For if we are but triflers, we cannot stand in the face either of heaven or of hell!"
He bent down and took her hands in his.
"Stephania," he said, "I too have doubted, I too have wavered:—give me but one word of assurance,—my love for you is a wound which no eternity can cure."