"I love you!" she wailed. "Tristan, I love you and my love is killing me! Be merciful. Have pity on me. Love me! Be mine--if but for an hour! It is not much to ask! After, do with me what you will! Torture me--curse me before Heaven--I care not--I am yours--body and soul.--I love you!" Her voice vibrated with mad idolatrous pleading. He tried to release himself. She dragged herself yet closer to him. "Tristan! Tristan!" she murmured. "Have you a heart? Can you reject me when I pray thus to you? When I offer you all I have? All that I am, or ever hope to be? Am I so repellent to you? Many men would give their lives if I were to say to them what I say to you. They are nothing to me--you alone are my world, the breath of my existence. You, alone, can save me from myself!" Tristan felt his senses swooning at the sight of her beauty. He tried to speak, but the words froze on his lips. It was too impossible, too unbelievable. Theodora, the most beautiful, the most powerful woman in Rome was kneeling before him, imploring that which any man in Rome would have deemed himself a thousand fold blessed to receive. And he remained untouched. She read his innermost thoughts and knew the supreme moment when she must win or lose him forever was at hand. "Tristan--Tristan," she sobbed--and in the distant grove sobbed flutes and sistrum and citherns--"say what you will of me; it is true. I own it. Yet I am not worse than other women who have sold their souls for power or gold. Am I not fair to look upon? And is all this beauty of my face and form worthless in your eyes, and you no more than man? Kill me--destroy me--I care naught. But love me--as I love you!" and in a perfect frenzy of self-abandonment she rose to her feet and stood before him, a very bacchante of wild loveliness and passion. "Look upon me! Am I not more beautiful than the Lady Hellayne? You shall not--dare not--spurn such love as mine!" Deep silence supervened. The expression of her countenance seemed quite unearthly; her eyes seemed wells of fire and the tense white arms seemed to seek a victim round which they might coil themselves to its undoing. The name she had uttered in her supreme outburst of passion had broken the spell she had woven about him. Hellayne--his white dove! What was her fate at this moment while he was listening to the pleadings of the enchantress? Theodora advanced towards him with outstretched arms. He stayed her with a fierce gesture. "Stand back!" he said. "Such love as yours--what is it? Shame to whosoever shall accept it! I desire you not." "You dare not!" she panted, pale as death. "Dare not?" But she was now fairly roused. All the savagery in her nature was awakened and she stood before him like some beautiful wild animal at bay, trembling from head to foot with the violence of her passion.