"Save him, Otto—save him!" she moaned, stretching out her arms towards him,—"You alone can—you alone."
He receded from her.
"I could not save him, even if I would!"
But the woman became frantic in her fear.
The consciousness of the terrible wrong which Crescentius had suffered at her hands, though the most subtle scrutiny of her heart failed to accuse her of a deed, unworthy herself, the unwitting instrument of Fate, added to her despair. She must save the Senator of Rome, even if she should herself pay the penalty of the crime of high treason, of which he stood accused.
"You will not have it said that you crushed your foe under your heels," she cried. "You are too kind, too generous,—Otto! The Senator's resistance is broken. He could not rise a fourth time, if he would—you have conquered. Otto,—for my sake,—by the memory of the past—"
He raised his arms. Now he was himself.
"Stop!" he said. "Why conjure up that memory which you have so cruelly poisoned and defiled? There was nothing,—even to life itself,—that I would not have given to you in exchange for your love—"
"But that it was not mine to give!" she moaned. "Can you not see?"
"You should have remembered that, ere you slowly but surely wove your net of deception round my heart. I loved you! Foe of mine, as I knew you to be, I trusted you! See, how you have requited this trust! See, what you have made of me! You but entered my life to wreck it! Once I loved the hours and the days and the nights and the stars, now my heart is a burnt-out volcano. And you who have taken all my life from me, now come to me crying for mercy for him, who showed such wondrous mercy for me! And you too—you! Did no pity ever enter your heart, when you saw that you were mercilessly chaining my life to despair? And after you revealed yourself his instrument,—Stephania, are you so mad as to think, that I would save the man who insidiously wrecked my life?"