"Your words are dark as the decrees of Fate," Basil replied, as the fumes of the brazier slowly cleared in his brain and he seemed to emerge once more from the endless caverns of night, staring about him with dazed senses. "You heed but what your passion prompts," the cowled figure interposed sternly, "oblivious of that greater destiny that awaits you! It is a perilous love born in the depths of Hell. Will you wreck your life for that which, at best, is but a fleeting passion--a one day's dream?" "Well may you counsel who have never known the hell of love!" Basil cried fiercely. "The fiery torrent that rushes through my veins defies cold reason." The cowled figure nodded. "Many a ruler in whose shadow men have cowered, has obeyed a woman's whim and tamely borne her yoke. Are you of those, my lord?" "I have set my soul upon this thing and Fate shall give to me that which I crave!" Basil cried fiercely. The wizard nodded. "Fate cannot long delay the last great throw." "What would you counsel?" the Grand Chamberlain queried eagerly, peering into the cowled and muffled face, from which two eyes sent their insane gleam into his own. "Send her soul into the dark caverns of fear--surround her with unceasing dread--let the ghosts of those you have sent butchered to their doom surround her nightly pillow, whispering strange tales into her ears,--then, when fear grips the maddened brain and there seems no rescue but the grave--then peals the hour." Basil gazed thoughtfully into the wizard's cowled face. "When may that be?" "I will gaze into the silent pools of my forbidden knowledge with the dark spirits that keep me company. I have mysterious rules for finding day and hour." "I cannot expel the passion that rankles in my blood," Basil interposed darkly. "But I will tear out my heart strings ere I shirk the call. An emperor's crown were worth a tenfold price, and ere I, too, descend to the dread shadows, I mean to see it won." "These thoughts are idle," said the wizard. "Only the weak plumb the depths of their own soul. The strong man's bark sails lightly on victorious tides. Your soul is pledged to the Powers of Darkness." "And by the fiends that sit at Hell's dark gate, I mean to do their bidding," Basil replied fiercely. "Else were I indeed the mock of destiny. Tell me but this--how did you obtain a knowledge at which the fiend himself would pale?" The wizard regarded him for a moment in silence. "You who have peered behind the curtain that screens the dreadful boundaries--you who have seen the pale phantom of Marozia, whom you have sent to her doom,--how dare you ask?" Basil had raised both hands as if to ward off an evil spirit. "This, too, then is known to you? Tell me! Was what I saw a dream?" "What you have seen--you have seen," the cowled form replied enigmatically. "The cocks are crowing--and the pale dawn glimmers in the East."