Tristan, dreading the worst, his soul bruised in its innermost depths, cursing himself for having permitted any consideration except Hellayne's life to interfere with his preconceived plans, started to follow, when Theodora, guessing his purpose, suddenly barred his way. Ere he could prevent, she had thrown her arms about him and her face upturned to his stormy brow she whispered deliriously, utterly oblivious of two eyes that burnt from their sockets like live coals: "I love you! I love you!" and her whole being seemed ablaze with the fire of an all-devouring passion. "Tristan, I love you with a love so idolatrous, that I could slay you with these hands rather than be spurned, be denied by you. Love me Tristan--love me! And I shall give you such love in return as mortals have never known. I am as one in a trance--I cannot see--I cannot think! I, the woman born to command--am begging--imploring--I care not what you do with me--what becomes of me. Take me!--I am yours--body and soul!" Her face was lighted up by the pale rays of the moon. But, though his senses were steeped in a delirium that almost took from him his manhood, the gloom but deepened on Tristan's brow, while with moist hungry lips she kissed him, again and again. At last, seemingly on the verge of merging his whole being into her own, he succeeded in extricating himself from the steely coils of those white arms. "Lady Theodora," he said in cold and constrained tones, "I am too poor to return even in part such priceless favors of the Lady Theodora's love!" Stung in her innermost soul by his words, trembling from head to foot with the violence of her emotions, she panted in a passion of anger and shame. "You dare? This to me? Since then you will not love me--take this--" Above him, in her hand, gleamed his own unsheathed dagger. Tristan with a supple movement caught the white wrist and wrenched the weapon from her. "The Lady Theodora is always true to herself," he said with cutting irony, retreating from her in the direction of the lake. She threw out her arms. "Tristan--Tristan--forgive me! Come back--I am not myself." He paused. "And were you Aphrodite, I should spurn your love,--I should refuse to kiss the lips, which a slave, a churl has defiled." "You spurn me," she laughed deliriously. "Perchance, you are right. And yet," she added in a sadder tone, "how often does fate but grant us the dream and destroy the reality. Go--ere I forget, and do what I may repent of. Go! My brain is on fire. I know not what I am saying. Go!" As Tristan turned without response, a gleam of deadly hatred shone from her eyes. For a long time she stood motionless by the kiosk, staring as one in a trance down the long cypress avenue, whose shadows had swallowed up Tristan's retreating form.