Hellayne had regained her self-possession. With a supreme effort she fought down the pain in her heart. "Never!" came the firm reply. "Then I shall take him from you!" "Deem you, I have aught to fear from such as you?" Hellayne said slowly, the blue fire of her eyes burning on the pale face of Theodora. "Deem you, that Tristan would defile his manhood with the courtesan queen of Rome?" A gasp, a choking outcry, and Theodora's white hands closed round Hellayne's throat. Though their touch burnt her like fire, Hellayne did not even raise her hands. Fearlessly she gazed into Theodora's face. "I am waiting," she said with the same passionless voice, but there was something in her eyes that gave the other woman pause. Theodora's hands fell limply by her side. What she read in Hellayne's eyes had caused her, perchance, for the first time, to blanch. She clapped her hands. The door opened and Persephoné stood on the threshold. She had listened, and not a word of their discourse had escaped her watchful ears. "The Lady Hellayne desires to return to her chamber," Theodora turned to the Circassian, and without another word Hellayne followed her guide. Yet, as she did so, her head was turned towards Theodora and in her eyes was an expression so inscrutable that Theodora turned away with a shudder, as the door closed behind their retreating forms, leaving her alone with her overmastering agony. CHAPTER VII A ROMAN MEDEA It was a moonless night.-- Deep repose was upon the seven hilled city. The sky was intensely dark, but the stars shone out full and lustrous. Venus was almost setting. Mars glowed red and fiery towards the zenith; the constellations seemed to stand out from the infinite spaces behind them. Orion glittered like a giant in golden armour; Cassiopeia shone out in her own peculiar radiance and the Pleiades in their misty brightness. A litter, borne by four stalwart Nubians, and preceded by two torch bearers, slowly emerged from the gates of Theodora's palace and took the direction of the gorge which divides the Mount of Cloisters from Mount Testaccio. Owing to the prevailing darkness which made all objects, moving and immobile, indistinguishable, the inmates of the litter had not drawn the curtains, so as to admit the cooling night air. There was a fixedness in Theodora's look and a recklessness in her manner that showed anger and determination. It struck Persephoné, who was seated by her side, with a sort of terror, and for once she did not dare to accost her mistress with her usual banter and freedom. Theodora had spent the early hours of the evening in a half obscured room, whose sable hangings seemed to reflect the unrest of her soul. She had forbidden the lamps to be lighted, brooding alone in darkness and solitude. Then she had summoned Persephoné, ordered her litter-bearers and commanded them to take her to the house of Sidonia, a woman versed in all manner of lore that shunned the light of day.