"Ah! Then you do not know. You seek for light, where the sun can never shine! Striving for the highest ideals of mankind we can rise from the black depths of doubt but by one ladder,—that of a woman's love!"
Again the dreadful doubt assailed him.
"If you mean—that,—oh, do not speak of it, Stephania! The wound is already past healing."
She bent towards him and rested her head upon his shoulders.
"And yet I must,—here—and to you."
"No—no—no!" he muttered helplessly and turned away. The words of Eckhardt rushed and roared through his memory: "Once you are hers,—no human power can save you from the abyss."
But Eckhardt hated the Romans as one hates a scorpion, a basilisk.
Stephania relinquished not her victim. He must be hers, body and soul, ere she shrieked the fatal word.—The warm blood hurtling through her veins quenched the last pitying spark.
"Ah!" she said with a sigh. "You have never known the tenderness of a woman's smile,—the touch of a woman's hand,—her soft caress,—the sound of her voice,—that haunts you everywhere,—waking,—in your dreams—"
"Stephania!" he gasped, and rose as if to flee from her, but she held him back.