For a pace Basil was silent. Could Theodora have read his thoughts at this moment the weapon would not have dropped from her nerveless grasp.
"Ah!" he said, and a film seemed to pass over his eyes in the utterance. "There is nothing that shall be left undone—through his honor—through the woman he loves."
She utterly abandoned herself to him now, suffering his endearments and kisses like a thing of stone and thereby rousing his passions to their highest pitch. She could have strangled him like a poisonous reptile that defiled her body, but, after having suffered his embrace for a time, she suddenly shook herself free of him.
"My lord—what of our plans? How much longer must I wait ere the clarions announce to Rome that the Emperor's Tomb harbors a new mistress? What of Alberic? What of Hassan Abdullah, the Saracen?"
Basil was regarding her with a mixture of savage passion, doubt, incredulity and something like fear.
"The death-hounds are on Alberic's scent," he said at last, with an effort to steady his voice, and hold in leash his feelings, which threatened to master him, as his eyes devoured the woman's beauty.—"Hassan Abdullah is even now in Rome."
"Can we rely upon him and his Saracens when the hour tolls that shall see Theodora mistress of Rome?"
"Weighing a sack of gold against the infidel's treachery, it is safe to predict that the scales will tip in favor of the bribe—so it be large enough."
"Be lavish with him, and if his heart be set on other matters—"
She paused, regarding the man with an inscrutable look. Shrewd as he was, he caught not its meaning.