As he bent over her, she made a convulsive effort to rise.
"I have slain the fiend, who came between us—forgive me if you can—" she muttered, then gasping: "Heaven have mercy on my soul!" she fell back into Eckhardt's arms.
At a sign from the Margrave the men-at-arms withdrew, leaving him alone with his gruesome burden.
After they had descended, he bent over the prostrate form, he had loved so well, touching with gentle fingers the soft, dark hair, which lay against his breast. Once,—he recalled the mad delirium of holding her thus close to his heart. Now there was something dreary, weird, and terrible in what would under other conditions have been unspeakable rapture. A chill as of death ran through him as he supported the dying woman in his arms. Her silken robe, her perfumed hair, the cold contact of the gems about her,—all these repelled him strangely; his soul was groaning under the anguish, his brain began to reel with a nameless, dizzy horror.
At last she stirred. Her body quivered in his hold, consciousness returned for a brief moment, and, with a heavy sigh, she whispered as from the depths of a dream:
"Eckhardt!"
A fierce pang convulsed the heart of the unhappy man. He started so abruptly, that he almost let her drop from his supporting arms. But his voice was choked; he could not speak.
A groan,—a convulsive shudder,—a last sigh,—and Theodora's spirit had flown from the lacerated flesh.
In silent anguish Eckhardt knelt beside the body of the woman, heedless of the hurricane which raged without, heedless of the flames, which, creeping closer and closer, began to lick the tower with their crimson tongues. At last, aroused by the warning cries of the men-at-arms below, Eckhardt staggered to his feet with the dead body, and scarcely had he emerged from the tower, when a terrible roar, a deafening crash struck his ear. The roof and walls of the great pavilion had fallen in and millions of sparks hissed up into the flaming ether.
For a moment Eckhardt paused, stupefied by the sheer horror of the scene. The pavilion was now but a hissing, shrieking pyramid of flames; the hot and blinding glare almost too much for human eyes to endure. Yet so fascinated was he with the sublime terror of the spectacle that he could scarcely turn away from it. A host of spectral faces seemed to rise out of the flames and beckon to him, to return,—when a tremendous peal of thunder, rolling in eddying vibrations through the heavens, recalled him to the realization of the moment, and gave the needful spur to his flagging energies. Raising his aching eyes, Eckhardt saw straight before him a gloomy archway, appearing like the solemn portal of some funeral vault, dark and ominous, yet promising relief for the moment. Stumbling over the dead bodies of Roxané and Roffredo and several other corpses strewn among fallen blocks of marble, and every now and then looking back in irresistible fascination on the fiery furnace in his rear, he carried his lifeless burden to the nearest shelter. He dared not think of the beauty of that dead face, of its subtle slumbrous charm, and stung to a new sense of desperation he plunged recklessly into the dark aperture, which seemed to engulf him like the gateway of some magic cavern. He found himself in a circular, roofless court, paved with marble, long discoloured by climate and age. Here he tenderly laid his burden down, and kneeling by Ginevra's side, bid his face in his hands.