Stung in her innermost soul by his words, trembling from head to foot with the violence of her emotions, she panted in a passion of anger and shame.
"You dare? This to me? Since then you will not love me—take this—"
Above him, in her hand, gleamed his own unsheathed dagger.
Tristan with a supple movement caught the white wrist and wrenched the weapon from her.
"The Lady Theodora is always true to herself," he said with cutting irony, retreating from her in the direction of the lake.
She threw out her arms.
"Tristan—Tristan—forgive me! Come back—I am not myself."
He paused.
"And were you Aphrodite, I should spurn your love,—I should refuse to kiss the lips, which a slave, a churl has defiled."
"You spurn me," she laughed deliriously. "Perchance, you are right. And yet," she added in a sadder tone, "how often does fate but grant us the dream and destroy the reality. Go—ere I forget, and do what I may repent of. Go! My brain is on fire. I know not what I am saying. Go!"