There was no safety in the pavilion, which a moment had transformed into a seething furnace. Volumes of smoke rolled up in thick, suffocating clouds, and the crimson glare of the flames illumined the dark night-sky far over the Aventine.
Half mad with fear from the shrieks and groans of the dying, which resounded everywhere about her, Theodora stood rooted to the spot, still clinging to the great column. Over her face swept a strange expression of loathing and exultation. Her eyes wandered to the red-tongued flames, that leaped in eddying rings round the great marble pillars, creeping every second nearer to the place where she stood, and in that one glance she seemed to recognize the entire hopelessness of rescue and the certainty of death.
For a moment the thought seemed terrifying beyond expression. None had thought of her,—all had sought their own safety! She laughed a laugh of uttermost, bitter scorn.
At last she seemed to regain her presence of mind. Turning, she started to the back of the great pavilion, with the manifest object of reaching some private way of egress, known but to herself. But her intention was foiled. No sooner had she gone back than she returned—this exit too was a roaring furnace. In terrible reverberations the thunder bellowed through the heavens, which seemed one vast ocean of flame; the elements seemed to join hands in the effort at her destruction:—So be it! It would extinguish a life of dishonour, disgrace and despair.
A haughty acceptance of her fate manifested itself in her stonily determined face. It would be atonement—though the end was terrible!
Suddenly she heard a rush close by her side. Looking up, she beheld the one she dreaded most on earth to meet, saw Eckhardt rushing blindly towards her through smoke and flames, crying frantically:
"Save her! Save her!"
Her wistful gaze, like that of a fascinated bird, was fixed on the Margrave's towering stature.
She tarried but a moment.
At the terrible crisis, on one side a roaring furnace,—on the other the man whom of all mortals she had wronged past forgiveness, her courage failed her. Remembering a secret door, leading to a tower, connected with a remote wing of the pavilion, where she might yet find safety, she dashed swift as thought through the panel, which receded at her touch, and vanished in the dark corridor beyond. Without heeding the dangers which might beset his path, Eckhardt flew after her through the gloom, till he found himself before a spiral stairway, at the terminus of the passage. A faint glimmer of light from above penetrated the gloom, and following it, he was startled by a faint outcry of terror, as on the last landing, to which he madly leaped, he found himself once more face to face with the woman, whom even at this moment he loved more in the certainty of having lost her, than ever in the pride and ecstasy of possession.