"I know not!"
"Then I will tell you, my own love! We will return to Rome together, you and I; Stephania, the empress of the West,—would not that reconcile your Romans,—appease their hate?"
Stephania gazed for a moment thoughtfully at Otto, then she shook her head.
"I fear," she replied after a pause, "we shall nevermore return to Rome."
As she spoke, her soft fingers stroked caressingly the youth's head, which rested on her bosom, while her right hand remained tightly clasped in his.
"I do not understand you," he said with a pained look.
"Do not let us speak of it now," she replied. "You are ill;—the fever burns in your blood. It likes you well, this Roman fever,—and yet you persist in returning hither ever and ever,—as to your destiny—"
"You are my destiny, Stephania! I cannot live without you! Had you not come, I should have died! God, you cannot know how I love you, how I worship you, how I worship the very air you breathe. Stephania! On that terrible, never-to-be-forgotten day, when your words planted death in my heart, he, who of all my Saxons hates you with a hatred strong and enduring as death, warned me of you! 'Must you love a Roman,' he said to me—'and of all Romans, Stephania, the wife of the Senator? Once in the toils of the Sorceress, you are lost! Nothing can save you.'—Can I say to my heart, you shall love this one,—or you shall not love this one? Shall I say to my soul, you shall harbour the image of this one, but that other shall be to you even as a barred Eden, guarded by the angel with the flaming sword? I have seen the maidens of my native land; I have seen the women of Rome;—but my heart was never touched until we met. My soul leaped forth to meet your own, when first we stood face to face in the chapel of the Confessor. Stephania,—my love for you is so great that I fear you."
"And why should you fear me? Were I here, did I not love you?"
"My life has been a wondrous one," he spoke after a pause. "From dazzling sun-kissed heights I have been hurled into the blackest abyss of despair. And what is my crime? Wherein have I sinned? I have loved a woman,—a woman wondrous fair,—Stephania!"