"Bring him to me—three days hence—as my guest. Thrice has he crossed my path.—Thrice has he defied me!—I have that in store for him at which men shall marvel for all time to come!"
Basil bent over the white hand and kissed it. Then he took his leave. Had he seen the expression in the woman's eyes as the heavy curtains closed behind him, it would have made the Grand Chamberlain pause.
Theodora passed to where the bronze mirror hung and stood long before it, with hands clasped behind her shapely head, wrapt in deepest thought.
And while she gazed on her mirrored loveliness, an evil light sprang up in her eyes and all her mouth's soft lines froze to a mould of dreaming evil, as she turned to where the image of Hekaté gazed down upon her with inhuman calm upon its face, and, holding out shimmering, imploring arms, she cried:
"Help me now, dread goddess of darkness, if ever you looked with love upon her whose prayers have been directed to you for good and for evil. Fire the soul of him I desire, as he stands before me, that he lose reason, honor, and manhood, as the price of my burning kisses—that he become my utter slave."
She clapped her hands and Persephoné appeared from behind the curtains.
"For once Fate is my friend," she turned with flashing eyes to the Circassian. "Before his departure to the shrines of the Archangel, Alberic has appointed this nameless stranger captain of Castel San Angelo. Go—find him and bring him to me! Now we shall see," she added, "if all this beauty of mine shall prevail against his manhood. Your eyes express doubt, my sweet Persephoné?"
Theodora had raised herself to her full height. She looked regal indeed—a wonderful apparition. What man lived there to resist such loveliness of face and form?
Persephoné, too, seemed to feel the woman's magic, for her tone was less confident when she replied:
"Such beauty as the Lady Theodora's surely the world has never seen."