Vainly endeavoring to speak, Tristan partook but sparingly of the refreshments which she offered to him with her own hands. She was now deliberately endeavoring to enmesh his senses, and her exotic, wonderful beauty could not but accomplish with him what it had accomplished with all who came under its fatal spell. An insidious, sensuous perfume seemed to float about her, which caused Tristan's brain to reel. Her bare arms and wonderful hands made him dizzy. Her eyes held his own by their strange, subtle spell. Unfathomed mysteries seemed to lurk in their hidden depths. Without endeavoring to engage him in conversation, much as she longed to question him on certain points, she tried to soothe him by passing her cool white hands over his fevered brow. And all the time she was pondering on the nature of his infliction and the author thereof, as her gaze pensively swept the banquet hall. The guests had, one by one, returned to their seats. Theodora also had arisen, after having made Tristan comfortable on the couch assigned to him. Unseen, the heavy folds of the curtain behind her parted. A face peered for a moment into her own, that seemed to possess no human attributes. Theodora gave a hardly perceptible nod and the face disappeared. The Grand Chamberlain took his seat by her side and Roxana flinging Theodora a glittering challenge seated herself beside Tristan. CHAPTER X THE CHALICE OF OBLIVION A delirium of the senses such as he had never experienced to this hour began to steal over Tristan, as he found himself seated between Theodora, the fairest sorceress that ever triumphed over the frail spirit of man--and Roxana, who was whispering strange words into his bewildered ears. Across the board the gloomy form of the Grand Chamberlain in his sombre attire loomed up like a shadow of evil in a garden of strangely tinted orchids. How the time passed on, he could not tell. Peals of laughter resounded now and then through the vaulted dome and voices were raised in clamorous disputations that just sheered off the boundary-line of actual quarrel. Theodora seemed to pay but little heed to Tristan. Roxana had coiled her white arms about him and, whenever he raised his goblet, their hands touched and a stream of fire coursed through his veins. Only now and then Theodora's drowsy eyes shot forth a fiery gleam from under their heavily fringed lids. Roxana smiled into her rival's eyes and, raising a goblet of wine to her lips, kissed the brim and gave it to Tristan with an indescribably graceful swaying motion of her whole form that reminded one of a tall white lily, bowing to the breeze. Tristan seized the cup eagerly, drank from it and returned it and, as their hands touched again, he could hardly restrain himself from giving way to a transport of passion. He was no longer himself. His brain seemed to reel. He felt as if he would plunge into the crater of a seething volcano without heeding the flames.