"In what manner can I be of service to the Lady Theodora?" he spoke at last, unable to let go of those wonderful hands that sent the hot blood hurtling to his brain.
Theodora's face was very close to his.
As she spoke, her perfumed breath softly fanned his cheeks.
She spoke with well-studied hesitancy, like a child that, in preferring an overbold request, fears denial in the very utterance.
"It is a small thing, I would ask," she said in her wonderfully melodious voice. "I would once again visit the places where I have spent the happy days of my childhood, the galleries and chambers of the Emperor's Tomb. You start, my Lord Tristan! Perchance this speech may sound strange to the ears of one who, though newly arrived in Rome, has heard but vituperations showered upon the head of a defenceless woman, who, if not better, is at least not worse than the rest of her kind. Yes—" she continued, returning the pressure of his fingers and noting, not without inward satisfaction, a soft gleam that had dispelled the sterner look in his eyes, "those were days of innocence and peace, broken only when the older sister, my equal in beauty, began to regard me as a possible rival. Stung by her taunts I leaped to her challenge and the fight for the dominion of Rome was waged between us with all the hot passion of our blood, Marozia conquered, but Death stood by unseen to crown her victory. The Mount of Cloisters is my asylum. The gates of the Emperor's Tomb are sealed to me forever more. Why should Alberic, disregarding the ties of blood, fear a woman—unless he hath deeply wronged her, even as he has wronged another who wears the crown of thorns upon earth?"
Theodora paused, her lids half-shut as if to repress a tear; in reality to scan the face of him who found her tale most strange indeed.
And, verily, Tristan was beginning to feel that he could not depend upon himself much longer. The subdued lights, the heavy perfume, the room itself, the seductive beauty of this sorceress so near to him that her breath fanned his cheeks, the touch of her hands, which had not relinquished his own, were making wild havoc with his senses and reason.
Like many a gentle and inexperienced nature, Tristan shrank from offending a woman's delicacy, by even appearing to question the truth of her words, and he doubted not but that here was a woman who had been sinned against much more than she had sinned, a woman capable of gentler, nobler impulses than were credited to her in the common reckoning. It required indeed a powerful constraint upon his feelings not to give way to the starved impulse that drove him to forget past, present and future in her embrace.
A sad smile played about the small crimson mouth as Theodora, with a sigh, continued:
"I have quaffed the joys of life. There is nothing that has remained untasted. And yet—I am not happy. The fires of unrest drive me hither and thither. After years of fiercest conflict, with those of my own sex and age, who consider Rome the lawful prey of any one that may usurp Marozia's fateful inheritance, I have had a glimpse of Heaven—a Heaven that perchance is not for me. Yet it aroused the desire for peace—happiness—love! Yes, my Lord Tristan, love! For though I have searched for it in every guise, I found it not. Will the hour every toll—even for me? Deem you, my Lord Tristan, that even one so guilt lost as Theodora might be loved?"