So we stood. Irresistible as had been my impulse to follow her, I now found myself held back, as if by the look in her eyes, from approaching nearer. So, while she gazed at me in wonder and terror, I regarded her with inexpressible scorn and love, horror and adoration.
Presently she spoke, in a terrified whisper:
"Why are you here?"
I answered in a low voice:
"Because you are here. Like a poisonous flower you lure me. A flower you are in outward beauty! Never was poison more sweetly concealed than is treachery in you!"
"You were mad to follow me!" she said, and then she cast a quick, apprehensive glance around the chamber, a glance that took in the different doors one after another.
I thought she meant that, as we were in the stronghold of my enemies and her friends, it would be madness in me to attempt to punish her treachery. So I replied:
"Seek not to fright me from vengeance, for I intend none! I did not come to punish. I do not know why it is, but where you are not I cannot rest. I am drawn to you as by some power of magic. I would be with you even in hell! Spy, traitress that you are, I love you! Your dupe that I am, I love you!" I went to where, with downcast eyes, she stood, and I caught her hand and pressed it to my lips. "I make myself a jest, a thing for laughter, do I not, kissing the hand that would slay me?"
She raised her eyes, and held out her hand towards the fire-place, saying:
"The hand that I would thrust into the flame to save you from the lightest harm!"