"It must be done! It shall be done!" she muttered, her white face tense, her white hands clenched. Suddenly her hand closed round Persephoné's wrist. "She defies me, knowing herself in my power," she said. "We shall see who shall conquer." "The Lady Hellayne is as fearless of death, as yourself, Lady Theodora," Persephoné replied. "Indeed, she seemed rather to desire it, for no woman ever faced you with such defiance as did she when you put before her the fatal choice." Theodora's face shone ghostly in the nocturnal gloom. "We shall see! She shall desire death a thousand fold ere she quits the abode I have assigned to her. God! Not even Roxana had dared to say to me what this one did." "Nor would her shafts have struck so deep a wound," Persephoné interposed with studied insolence. Theodora's grip tightened round the girl's wrist. "You admire the Lady Hellayne?" she said softly, but there was a gleam in her eyes like liquid fire. "As one brave woman admires another!" Persephoné replied fearlessly, turning her beautiful face to the speaker. "You may require all your courage some day to face another task," Theodora replied. "Beware, lest you tempt me to do what I might regret." Persephoné turned white. Her bosom heaved. Her eyes met Theodora's. "I shall welcome the ordeal with all my heart!" Theodora relapsed into silence, oppressed by dark thoughts, the memory of unresisted temptations, a chaotic world where black unscalable rocks, like circles of the Inferno, hemmed her in on every side, while devils whispered into her ears the words that gave shape and substance to her desire to destroy her rival in the love of the one man whom, in all her changeable life, she had truly desired. "Deem you, that I have aught to fear from such as you? Deem you, that Tristan would defile his manhood with the courtesan queen of Rome?" The words still boomed in her ears, the words and the tone in which they had been hurled in her face. Even to this moment she knew not what restrained her from strangling Hellayne. It seemed to her that only in a physical encounter could she quench the hatred she bore this white, beautiful statue who never raised her voice while the fire of her blue eyes seared her very soul. A thousand frightful forms of evil, stalking shapes of death, came and went before her imagination, which caused her to clutch first at one, then at another of the dire suggestions that came in crowds which overwhelmed her powers of choice. Then, like an inspiration from the very depths of Hell, a thought flashed into her mind, and, no sooner conceived, than she determined upon its execution.