"Then what is it?" she queried, her eyes upon his lips as if she were waiting sentence to be pronounced upon her. "I am the Senator's man!" The words fell upon her ears like the knell of doom. "He will release you! I will go to him--if your pride is greater, than your love." She was all woman now, deaf to reason and entreaty, thinking of nothing but her great love of him. He drew her down beside him on the marble seat. "Listen, Hellayne! You do not understand--you wrong me cruelly. Naught is there in this world that I would not do to make you happy--you, whose love and happiness are my one concern while life endures. But this thing may not be. The Senator of Rome is away on a pilgrimage. He has chosen me to watch over this city till his return. Danger lurks about me in every guise. Its nature I know not. But I do know that there is some dark power at work plotting evil. There is one I do not trust--the Lord Basil." Hellayne gave a start. "The bosom friend, so it would seem, of the Count Laval." The color had left Tristan's face. "You have met?" "He appears to have taken a great liking to my lord. Almost daily does he call, and they seem to have some secret matter between them." Tristan gripped Hellayne's hand so fiercely that she hardly suppressed an outcry. "Have you surprised any utterance?" "Only a name. They thought I was out of earshot." "What name?" "Theodora!" She watched him narrowly as she spoke the word. He gave a start. "Theodora," Hellayne repeated slowly. "She who saved your life when my poor efforts failed." There was a tinge of bitterness in her tone which did not escape Tristan's ear. Ere he could make reply, she followed it up with the question: "What is there between you and her?" "For aught I know it is some strange whim of the woman, call it infatuation if you will," he replied, "which, though I have repelled her, still maintains. It was at her feast I first met the Lord Roger face to face." "How came you there?" she questioned with pained voice. Tristan recounted the circumstances, concealing nothing from the time of his arrival in Rome to the present hour. Hellayne listened wearily, but the account he gave seemed rather to irritate than to reconcile her to him, who thus laid bare his heart before her. "And so soon was I forgot?" she crooned. "Never for a moment were you forgot, my Hellayne," he replied with all the fervor of persuasion at his command. "At all times have I loved you, at all times was your image enshrined in my heart. Theodora is all-powerful in Rome, as was Marozia before her. The magistrates, the officers of the Senator's court, are her creatures,--Basil no less than the rest. Would that the Lord Alberic returned, for the burden he has placed upon my shoulders is exceeding heavy. But you, my Hellayne, what will you do? I cannot bear the thought of knowing you with him who has wrecked your life, your happiness." In Hellayne's blue eyes there was a great pain.