"And why should you be disposed to confer upon me such a favor?" Tristan asked with instinctive caution. "I am a stranger to you. What have we in common?" Persephoné laughed. "Perchance I am in love with you myself--ever since that night when you would not enter the forbidden gates. Perchance you may be able to serve me in turn--some day. How cold you are! Like the frozen North! Come! Waste no more time, if you would not regret it forevermore."-- There was something compelling in her words that upset Tristan's resolution. Still, he wavered. "You have seen my mistress," Persephoné resumed, "the fairest woman and the most powerful in Rome--a near kinswoman, too, of your new master--the Senator." The words startled Tristan. "It needs but a word from her to make you what she pleases," she continued, as they delved into the now darkening streets. "She is headstrong and imperious and does not brook resistance to her will." Tristan remembered certain words Alberic had spoken to him at their final parting. It behooved him to be on his guard, yet without making of Theodora an open enemy. "Be wary and circumspect," had been the Senator's parting words. "Did the Lady Theodora send you for me?" he asked, with some anxiety in his tone. "And how did you know where to find me in a city like this?" "I know a great many things--and so does my mistress," Persephoné made smiling reply. "But she does not choose every one to be as wise as she is. I will answer both your questions though, if you will answer one of mine in return. The Lady Theodora did not mention you by name," Persephoné prevaricated, "yet I do not think there is another man in Rome who would serve her as would you.--And now tell me in turn.--Deem you not, she is very beautiful?" "The Lady Theodora is very beautiful," Tristan replied with a hesitation that remained not unremarked. "Yet, what is there in common between two strangers from the farthest extremities of the earth?" "What is there in common?" Persephoné smiled. "You will know ere an hour has sped. But, if you would take counsel from one who knows, you will do wisely to ponder twice before you choose--your master. Silence now! Step softly, but follow close behind me! It is very dark under the trees." They had arrived on Mount Aventine. Before them, in the dusk, towered the great palace of Theodora. After cautioning him, Persephoné led Tristan through a narrow door in a wall and they emerged in a garden. They were now in a fragrant almond grove where the branches of the trees effectually excluded the rays of the rising moon, making it hardly possible to distinguish Persephoné's tall and lithe form. Presently they emerged upon a smooth and level lawn, shut in by a black group of cedars, through the lower branches of which peeped the crescent moon and, turning the corner of a colonnade, they entered another door which opened to Persephoné's touch and admitted them into a long dark passage with a lamp at the farther end.