He extended his hand to his strange counsellor.
"It shall be as you say: The Rubicon is passed. I have no choice."
The stranger nodded, but he did not touch the proffered hand.
At last the Chamberlain rose to leave the hall.
The sounds of lutes and harps quivered through the Groves of Theodora; flutes and cymbals, sistrum and tympani mingled their harmonies with the tempest of sound that hovered over the great orgy, which was now at its height. The banquet-hall whirled round him like a vast architectural nightmare. Through the dizzy glare he beheld perspectives and seemingly endless colonnades. Everything sparkled, glittered, and beamed in the light of prismatic irises, that crossed and shattered each other in the air. Viewed through that burning haze even the inanimate objects seemed to have waked to some fantastic representation of life.—But through it all he saw one face, supremely fair in its marble cold disdain,—and unable to endure the sight longer Benilo the Chamberlain rushed out into the open.
In the distance resounded the chant of pilgrims traversing the city and imploring the mercy and clemency of heaven.
CHAPTER VI
JOHN OF THE CATACOMBS
nce outside of the pavillion, Benilo uttered a sigh of relief. He had resolved to act without delay. Ere dawn he would be assured that he held in his grasp the threads of the web. There was no time to be lost. Onward he hurried, the phantom of the murdered girl floating before his eyes in a purple haze.