An hour was to come when Tristan was to learn the terrible import of the apparently meaningless jumble which struck his ear with mad discordance.
Suddenly he felt upon himself the insane gleam of two eyes, peering from the slits of the bent figure's mask.
There was a death-like stillness, as both looked towards the intruder. Tristan would have fled, but his feet seemed rooted to the spot. His energies were paralyzed as under the influence of a terrible spell.
The stooping form raised aloft a small phial. A bluish vapor floated upward, in thin spiral curls.
The effect was instantaneous. Tristan was seized by a great drowsiness. His limbs refused to support him. He no longer felt the ground under his feet. His hand went to his head and, reeling like a drunken man, he fell among the tall weeds that grew in riotous profusion around the ancient masonry.
The setting moon shone out from behind a fleecy cloud, and in the pallid crimson of her light the ill-famed ruins of the ancient temple of Isis rose weird and ghostly in the summer night.
[CHAPTER IX]
THE FEAST OF THEODORA
A fairy-like radiance pervaded the great pavilion in the sunken gardens of Theodora on Mount Aventine.