"Stephania," he said, "why are you here to-night?"
"What a strange question," she replied, "and from you."
"Yes—from me! From me to you. Is it because—"
He paused as if oppressed by some great dread. He dared not trust himself to speak those words in her hearing.
"Is it because I love you?" she complemented the sentence, drawing him down beside her. But the seed of doubt Eckhardt had planted in his heart had taken root.
"Stephania," he said with a strange voice, without replying directly to her question. "I have trusted in you and I will continue to trust in you, even despite the whisperings of the fiend,—until with my own eyes I behold you faithless. Eckhardt has been with me all day," he continued with unsteady voice, "he has warned me against you, he has warned me to place no trust in your words, that you are but the instrument of Crescentius; that he has organized a mutiny; that he but awaits your signal for my destruction. He has warned me that you have planned my seizure and selected this spot, to prevent intervention. Stephania, answer me—is it so?"
For a moment the woman gazed at him in dread silence, unable to speak.
"Did you believe?" she faltered at last with averted gaze, very pale.
"I am here!" he replied.
Stephania laughed nervously.