"He has warned me against you!"
She turned very pale.
"And you heeded?"
"I am here, Stephania!"
The subtle perfume clinging to her gown mounted to his brain, choking back reason and resistance.
"Yet again I ask you, what is this to lead to? I am afraid of the future as a child of the dark!"
She held his hands tightly clasped.
"Oh!" she sobbed, "why will you torture me? I have borne much for our love's sake—but to answer you now is to relive it and I lack the strength."
He held her hands fast, his eyes in hers.
"No, Stephania," he said, "your strength never failed you when there was call on it, and our whole past calls on it now! Eckhardt tells me that the Romans hate me,—that they resent the love I bear them—oh, if it were true!"