"A most womanly deed! But where did this meeting take place?"
"In the Grottos of Egeria!"
"In the Grottos of Egeria!" the monk repeated aghast.
"And then," she continued with a great sadness in her tone, "I never felt so strangely mad,—I would have him share some offence, to justify the clamour I had provided, scarcely I know how to believe it now myself.—I did to his lips,—what I now do to your hand."
And she kissed the monk's yellow hand with timid reverence.
"Thou! Thou! Stephania,—the wife of Crescentius, and not yet set in the first line of the book of shame!" shouted the monk, convulsively starting at every word of his own climax. "Begone—begone! The vessel is full, even to overflowing!—Tell me no more,—tell me no more!"
"Your suspicion indeed shows me all my ignominy," said Stephania, groping for his hand, which he had snatched furiously away. "But he only suffered it,—because he guessed not my intent in the darkness."
"In the darkness?"
"In the darkness."
"Deemest thou it possible to clasp the plague and to evade the contagion?" questioned the monk. "Woman, I command thee, stop! Stop ere the condemning angel closes the record!"