"You shall stay—and you shall listen to me!" she said, without raising her voice, as if she were discoursing upon some trifling matter, and Tristan obeyed, compelled by the look in her eyes.
Theodora felt Tristan's melancholy gaze resting upon her, as it had rested upon her at their first meeting. Was not he, too, like herself, a lone wanderer in this strange country called the world! But his manhood had remained unsullied. How she envied and how she hated that other woman to whom his love belonged. Softly she spoke, as one speaks in a dream.
She had gone forth in quest of happiness—happiness at any price. And she had paid the forfeit with a poisoned life. The desire to conquer had eclipsed every other. The lure of the senses was too mighty to be withstood. Yet how short are youth and life! One should snatch its pleasures while one may.
How fleet had been the golden empty days of joy. She had drained the brimming goblet to the dregs. If he misjudged her motive, her self-abasement, if he spurned the love she held out to him, the one supreme sacrifice of her life had been in vain. She would fight for it. Soul and body she would throw herself into the conflict. Her last chance of happiness was at stake. The poison, rankling in her veins, she knew could not be expelled by idle sophisms. Life, the despot, claimed his dues. Had she lived utterly in vain? Not altogether! She would atone, even though the bonds of her own forging, which bound her to an ulcered past, could be broken but by the hand of that crowned phantom: Death.
Now she was kneeling before him. She had grasped his hands.
"I love you!" she wailed. "Tristan, I love you and my love is killing me! Be merciful. Have pity on me. Love me! Be mine—if but for an hour! It is not much to ask! After, do with me what you will! Torture me—curse me before Heaven—I care not—I am yours—body and soul.—I love you!"
Her voice vibrated with mad idolatrous pleading.
He tried to release himself. She dragged herself yet closer to him.
"Tristan! Tristan!" she murmured. "Have you a heart? Can you reject me when I pray thus to you? When I offer you all I have? All that I am, or ever hope to be? Am I so repellent to you? Many men would give their lives if I were to say to them what I say to you. They are nothing to me—you alone are my world, the breath of my existence. You, alone, can save me from myself!"
Tristan felt his senses swooning at the sight of her beauty. He tried to speak, but the words froze on his lips. It was too impossible, too unbelievable. Theodora, the most beautiful, the most powerful woman in Rome was kneeling before him, imploring that which any man in Rome would have deemed himself a thousand fold blessed to receive. And he remained untouched.