"Ask your own heart,—it will answer for mine!"
"Then if you love me,—be mine,—my wife,—my queen!"
"How can I answer you at this moment, how can I? Look yonder,—the stockades are afire,—your Saxons are scaling the walls,—-Otto,—will you have it said that you killed him to possess me?"
He snatched his hands away from her.
"But how can I save him, Stephania?—Collect your woman's wit! How can I?"
"Oh, how they swarm on the parapets!" she moaned. "Mercy, King Otto,—ere it be too late!"
"Let not the King know the mercy in Otto's heart," he replied between irresolution and resentment. "But how can I reach Eckhardt? And think you my messenger would move him? Think you, he would listen to me?"
"You are the sovereign! The King! Have you none that you can send, that you can trust? None, fleet of foot and discreet?"
Otto pondered.
Stephania's gaze was riveted on his face, as the eye of the criminal about to be condemned, hangs on the countenance of his judge, who speaks the sentence. At this moment loud shouts came through the storm. The Germans were hoisting new ladders for the assault. In the glare of the conflagration and the incessant lightning they could be discerned swarming like ants.