She threw back her wide sleeves and two dazzling white arms encircled Basil's neck. "Await me yonder," she then turned to her visitor, pointing to a chamber situated beyond the curtain. "We will talk this matter over!" Basil retired and Sidonia busied herself, replacing the different phials in the ebony chest. After having assured herself that everything was in its place, she picked up the lamp and disappeared behind the curtain in the background. Deep midnight silence reigned in the gorge of Mount Aventine. CHAPTER VIII IN TENEBRIS Another day had gone down the never returning tide of time. The sun was sinking in a rosy bed of quilted clouds. All day long Hellayne had sat brooding in her chamber, unable to shake off the lethargy of despair that bound and benumbed her limbs, rousing herself at long intervals just sufficiently to wring her hands for very anguish, without even the faintest ray of hope to pierce the black night of her misery. Just as a white border of light had been visible on the edge of the dark cloud that hung over her, just as she had refound the man whose love was the very breath of her existence, her evil star had again flamed in the ascendant and, losing him anew, she had utterly lost herself. She struggled with her thoughts, as a drowning man amid tossing waves, groping about in the dark for a plank to float upon, when all else has sunk in the seas around him. She had hardly touched the food which Persephoné herself had brought to her. Yet it seemed to her the Circassian had regarded her strangely, as she placed the viands before her. She had tried to frame a question, but her lips seemed to refuse the utterance, and at last Persephoné had departed, with the mocking promise to return later, to inquire how the Lady Hellayne had spent the day. Now it seemed to her as if a poison breath of evil was slowly permeating the narrow confines of her chamber. Something she had never before experienced was floating before her vision, was creeping into her brain, was booming in her ears, was turning her blood to ice. Was it the voiceless echo of an ill-omened incantation, handed down through generations of poisoners and witches from the time of pagan Rome? "Hecaten voco, Voco Tisiphonem, Spargens avernales aquas, Te morti devoveo; te diris ago." Was she going mad? Hellayne's hands went to her forehead. "I think I am sane," she said to herself, "at least--as yet."