Under the Witches' Moon: A Romantic Tale of Mediaeval Rome

"In the Hermit's cell – "

"Well done! Thereby he shall prove his asceticism. Let practised abstinence save him in such a pass! He shall eat his words – an everlasting banquet. A fat astrologer – by the token – as I hear, was he not?"

"He was fat when he entered."

"Wretch! Would you starve him? Remember the worms and the fishes – your friends. Would you cheat them? Hath he foretold his end?"

"Ay – by starvation."

"He lies! You shall take him in extremis and, with your knife in his throat, give him the lie. An impostor proved. What of the night?"

"It rains and thunders."

"Why should we mind rain and thunder? Lead me to this madman, and, incidentally, to this phantom that keeps him company. Why do you gape, Maraglia? Move on! I follow!"

Maraglia was ill at ease, but he dared not disobey. Taking up one of the candles, he led the way, trembling, his face ashen, his teeth chattering, as if in the throes of a chill.

Through a panel door in the wall they descended a winding stairway, leaving the dog behind. The flight conducted them to a private postern, well secured and guarded inside and out. As they issued from this the howl of blown rain met and staggered them. Looking up at the cupola of basalt from the depths of that well of masonry, it seemed to crack and split in a rush of fusing stars. Basil's mad soul leapt to the call of the hour. He was one with this mighty demonstration of nature. His brain danced and flickered with dark visions of power. He appeared to himself as an angel, a destroying angel, commissioned from on high to purge the world of lies.

"Take me to this monk!" he screamed through the thunder.

Deep in the foundation of the northeastern crypts the miserable creature was embedded in a stone chamber as utterly void and empty as despair. The walls, the floor, the roof were all chiselled as smooth as glass. There was not a foothold anywhere even for a cat, neither door, nor traps, nor egress, nor window of any kind save where, just under the ceiling, the grated opening by which he had been lowered, admitted by day a haggard ghost of light. And even that wretched solace was withdrawn as night fell, became a phantom, a diluted whisp of memory, sank like water into the blackness, and left the fancy suddenly naked in the self-consciousness of hell. Then the monk screamed like a madman and threw himself towards the flitting spectre. He fell on the smooth surface of the polished rock and bruised his limbs horribly. Yet the very pain was a saving occupation. He struck his skull and revelled in the agonizing dance of lights the blow procured him. But one by one they blew out; and in a moment dead negation had him by the throat again, rolling him over and over, choking him under enormous slabs of darkness. Gasping, he cursed his improvidence, in not having glued his vision to the place of the light's going. It would have been something gained from madness to hold and gloat upon it, to watch hour by hour for its feeble redawn. Among all the spawning monstrosities of that pit, with only the assured prospect of a lingering death before him, the prodigy of eternal darkness quite overcrowded that other of thirst or starvation.

Yet the black gloom broke, it would seem, before its due. Had he annihilated time and was this death? He rose rapturously to his feet and stood staring at the grating, the tears gushing down his sunken cheeks. The bars were withdrawn, in their place a dim lamp was intruded and a face looked down.

"Barnabo – are you hungry and a-thirst?"

The voice spoke to him of life. It was the name he had borne in the world and he wondered who from that world could be addressing him.

He answered quaveringly.

"Of a truth, I am hungry and a-thirst."

"It is a beatitude," replied the voice suavely. "You shall have your fill of justice."

"Justice!" screamed the prisoner. "I fear it is but an empty phrase."

"Comfort yourself," said the other. "I shall make a full measure of it! It shall bubble and sparkle to the brim like a goblet of Cyprian. Know you the wine, monk? A cool fragrant liquid, that gurgles down the arid throat and brings visions of green meadows and sparkling brooks – "

"I ask no mercy," cried the monk, falling on his knees and stretching out his lean arms. "Only make an end of it – of this hellish torment."

"Torment?" came the voice from above. "What torment is there in the vision of the wine cup – or, for that matter, a feast on groaning tables under the trees? Are you not rich in experiences, Barnabo, – both of the board and of love? Remember the hours when she lay in your arms, innocent, save of original sin? Ah! Could she see you now, Barnabo – how you have changed! No more the elegant courtier that wooed Theodora ere despair drove you to don the penitential garb and, like Balaam's ass, to raise your voice and prophesy! Deem you – as fate has thrown her into these arms of mine – memory will revive the forgotten joys of the days of long ago?"

"Mercy – demon!" gasped the monk. His swollen throat could hardly shape the words.

Basil laughed and bent lower.

"Answer me then – you who boast of being inspired from above – you who listen to the music of the spheres in the dead watches of the night – tell me then, you man of God – how long am I to live?"

"Monster, relieve me of your sight!" shrieked the unhappy wretch.

"It is the light," mocked Basil. "The light from above. Raise your voice, monk, and prophesy. You who would hurl the anathema upon Basil, the Grand Chamberlain, who arrogated to yourself the mission to purge the universe and to summon me – me – before the tribunal of the Church – tell me, you, who aspired to take to his bed the spouse of the devil, till the white lightnings of her passion seared and blasted your carcass, – tell me – how long am I to live?"

An inarticulate shriek came from within.

"By justice – till the dead rise from their graves."

"Live forever – on an empty phrase?" Basil mocked. "Are you, too, provisioned for eternity?"

He held out his hand as if he were offering the starving wretch food.

The monk fell on his knees. His lips moved, but no sound was audible.

"Perchance he hath a vision," Basil turned to Maraglia who stood sullenly by.

"Oh, dull this living agony."

"How long am I to live?"

"Now, hear me, God," screamed the monk. "Let not this man ever again know surcease from torment in bed, at board, in body or in mind. Let his lust devour him, let the worm burrow in his entrails, the maggot in his brain! May death seize and damnation wither him at the moment when he is nearest the achievement of his fondest hopes!"

Basil screamed him down.

An uncontrollable terror had seized him.

"Silence, beast, or I shall strangle you!"

"Libertine, traitor, assassin – may heaven's lightnings blast you – "

For a moment the two battled in a war of screeching blasphemy.

At the next moment the grate was flung into place, the light whisked and vanished, a door slammed and the Stygian blackness of the cell closed once more upon the moaning heap in its midst.

Basil's eyes gleamed like live coals as he turned to Maraglia, who, quaking and ashen, was babbling a prayer between white lips.

"Make an end of him!" he snarled. "He has lived too long. And now, in the devil's name, lead the way above!"

A flash of lightning that seemed to rend the very heavens illumined for a moment the dark and tortuous passage, its sheen reflected through the narrow port-holes on the blackness of the walls. It was followed by a peal of thunder so terrific that it shook the vast pile of the Emperor's Tomb to its foundations, clattering and roaring, as if a thousand worlds had been rent in twain.

Maraglia, who had preceded the Grand Chamberlain with the taper, uttered a wild shriek of terror, dropped the light, causing it to be extinguished and his fleeting steps carried him down a night-wrapped gallery as fast as his limbs would carry him, utterly indifferent to Basil's fate in the Stygian gloom.

Paralyzed with terror, the Grand Chamberlain stared into the inky blackness. For a moment it had seemed to him as if a breath from an open grave had indeed been wafted to his nostrils.

But it was neither the thunder, nor the lightning, neither the swish of the rain nor the roar of the hurricane, that had prompted Maraglia's outcry and precipitate flight and his abject terror, as we shall see.

CHAPTER II
THE CALL OF EBLIS

In the lurid flash that had illumined the gallery, lighting up rows of cells and deep recesses, Basil had seen, as if risen from the floor, a black, indefinable shape, wrapped in a long black mantle, the hood of which was drawn over its face. Through its slits gleamed two eyes, like live coals. Of small stature and apparently great age, the bent apparition supported itself by a crooked staff, the fleshless fingers barely visible under the cover of the ample sleeve, and resembling the claws of some bird of prey.

At last the terror which the uncanny apparition inspired changed to its very counterpart, as, defiance in his tone, the Grand Chamberlain made a forward step.

"Who goes there? – Friend or foe of the Lord Basil?" —

His voice sounded strange in his own ears.

A gibbering response quavered out of the gloom.

"What matters friend or foe as long as you grasp the tenure of power?"

Basil breathed a sigh of relief.

"I ought to know that voice. You are Bessarion?"

"I have waited long," came the drawling reply.

There was a pause brief as the intake of a breath.

"What do you demand?" —

"You shall know in time."

"In time comes death!"

"And more!"

"It is the hour that calls!"

"Are you prepared?"

"Show me what you can do!"

"For this I am here! Are you afraid?"

The air of mockery in the questioner's tone cut the speaker to the quick.

In the intermittent flashes of lightning Basil saw the shapeless form cowering before him in the dusk of the gallery, barring the way. But again it mingled quickly with the darkness.

"Of whom?" Basil queried.

There was another pause.

"Of the Presence!"

"That craven hound Maraglia has upset the light," muttered Basil. "I cannot see you."

"Can you not feel my presence?" came the gibbering reply.

"Even so!"

"Know you what high powers of night control your life – what dark-winged messengers of evil fly about you?"

"Your words make my soul flash like a thunder cloud."

"And yet does your power stand firm?"

"It rests on deep dug dungeons, where the light of heaven does not intrude. I spread such fear in men's white hearts as the craven have never known."

A faint chuckle came in reply.

"Only last night I saw you in the magic crystal sphere in which I read the dire secrets of Fate. Above your head flew evil angels. Beneath your horse's hoofs a corpse-strewn path."

"The time is not yet ripe."

"Time does not wait for him who waits to dare."

An evil light flashed from Basil's eyes.

"What can you do?"

Response came as from the depths of a grave.

"I shall conjure such shapes from the black caves of fear as have not ventured forth since madness first began to prowl among the human race, when the torturing dusk drowns every helpless thing in livid waves of shadow. It is the spirit of your sire that draws the evil legions to you."

Basil straightened in surprise.

"What know you of him?" he exclaimed. "Dull prayers and fasts and penances, not such freaks as this, were the only things he thought of."

From the cowled form came a hiss.

"Fool! Not that grunting and omnivorous swine who took the cowl, begat you! Your veins run with fiery evil direct from its fountainhead. No, no, – not he!"

"Not he?" shrieked the Grand Chamberlain. "If I am not his progeny, then whose?"

"Some mighty lord's."

"The Duke of Beneventum?"

"One greater yet."

"King Berengar?"

"One adored by him as his liege."

"Ha! I guess it now! It was Otto the Great, he whose fury gored the heart of the Romans."

"One greater still."

"Earth hath no greater lord."

"Is there not heaven above and hell below? Your sire rules the millions who have donned fear's stole forever. He is lord of lords, where all the lips implore and none reply."

A flash of lightning gleamed through the gallery.

A shadow passed over Basil's countenance, like a swift sailing cloud.

Darkness supervened, impenetrable, sepulchral.

"Well may you cower," gibbered the shape in its inexorable monotone. "For you came into this life among the death-fed mushrooms that grow where murder rots. The moon-struck wolves howled for three nights, and ill-omened birds flapped for three days around the tower where she who gave you life breathed her last."

A fitful muttering as of souls in pain seemed to pervade the night-wrapped galleries, with sultry storm gusts breathing inarticulate evil. No light save the white flash of the lightning revealed now and then the uncanny form of the speaker. The smell of rotting weeds came through the crevices of the wall.

When Basil, spell-bound, found no tongue, the dark shape continued:

"Wrapped in midnight's cloak, nine witches down in the castle moat sang a baptismal hymn of horror as you saw the light. As mighty brazen wings sounded the roaring of the tempest-churned seas. And above you stood he who holds the keys to thought's dark chambers, he in whose ranks the sullen angels serve, whose shadowy dewless wings cast evil on the world. And I am he whose palace rings with the eternal Never!"

Frozen with terror Basil listened.

The thunder growled ever louder. A vampire's bark stabbed the darkness; the shriek of witches rose above the tempest, there was a rattling of bones as if skeletons were rising from their graves. All round the Emperor's Tomb the ghouls were prowling, and the soulless corpses were as restless as the fleshless souls that whimpered and moaned in the night. Giant bats flew to and fro like evil spirits. The great peals shook the huge pile from vault to summit. The running finger of the storm scribbled fiery, cabalistical zigzags on the firmament's black page. And in every peal, louder and louder as the echoes spread, Basil seemed to hear his name shrieked by the weird powers of darkness, till, half mad with terror, he cried:

"Away! Away! Your presence flings dark glare like glowing lava – "

"I come across the night," replied the voice, "ere death has made you mine! Deserve the doom that is prepared for those who do my bidding. You have shot into my heart a ray of blackest light – "

Basil held out his hands, as if to ward off some unseen assailant.

"Whirl back into the night – " he shrieked, but the voice resumed, mocking and gibbering.

"Only a coward will shrink from the dreadful boundaries between things of this earth and things beyond this earth. I have sought you by night and by day – as fiercely as any of those athirst pant round hell's mock springs! In the great vaults of wrath, in the sleepless caverns, whose eternal darkness is only lighted by pools of molten stone that bathe the lost, where, in the lurid light, the shadows dance – I sit and watch the lakes of torment, taciturn and lone. I summon you to earthly power – to the fulfillment of all your heart desires!" —

The voice ceased. All the elements of hell seemed to roar and shriek around the battlemented walls.

There was a pause during which Basil regained his composure.

At last the dread shadow was looming across his path. An undefined awe crept over him, such as dark chasms instill; an awe at his own self. He would fain have been screened from his own substance. By degrees he welcomed the tidings with a dark rapture. In himself lay the substance of Evil. It was not the Angel of Light that ruled the reeling universe. It was the shadow of Eblis looming dark and terrible over the lives of men. Long before he had ever guessed what rills of flaming Phlegethon ran riot in his veins, had he not felt his pulses swell with joy at human pain, had he not played the fiend untaught? Could not the Fiend, as well as God, live incarnate in human clay? Was not the earth the meeting ground of Heaven and Hell? And why should not he, Basil, defying Heaven, be Hell's incarnation? —

Ay – but the day of death and the day of reckoning! Would his parentage entail eternal fire, or princely power and sway in the dark vaults of nameless terror? Should he quail or thrill with awful exaltation?

"And – in return for that which I offer up – King of the dark red glare – will you give to me what I crave – boundless power and the woman for which my soul is on fire?"

"Have you the courage to snatch them from the talons of Fate?" came back the gibbering reply.

A blinding flash of lightning was succeeded by an appalling crash of thunder.

"From Hell itself!" shrieked Basil frenzied. "Give me Theodora and I will fill the cup of torture that I have seized on your shadowy altars, and quaff your health at the terrific banquet board of Evil in toasts of torment – in wine of boundless pain!"

In the quickly succeeding flashes of lightning the dark form seemed to rise and to expand.

"I knew you would not fail me! Come!"

For a moment Basil hesitated, fingering the hilt of his poniard.

"Where would you lead me?" he queried, his tone far from steady. "How many of these twilights must I traverse before I see him whom you serve?"

"That you shall know to-night!"

In the deep and frozen silence which succeeded the terrible peals of thunder their retreating footsteps died to silence in the labyrinthine galleries of the Emperor's Tomb.

Only the dog-headed Anubis seemed to stare and nod mysteriously.

CHAPTER III
THE CRYSTAL SPHERE

Outwardly and in daylight there was nothing noticeable about the sixth house in the Lane of the Sclavonians in Trastevere beyond the fact that it was a dwelling of a superior kind to those immediately surrounding it, which were chiefly ill-favored cottages of fishermen and boatmen, and had about it an air of almost sombre retirement.

It stood alone within a walled court, containing a few shrubs. The windows were few, high and narrow, and the front bore a rather forbidding appearance. One ascending to the flat roof would have found it to command on the left a desolate view of a square devoted to executions, and on the right a scarcely more cheerful prospect over the premises belonging to the convent of Santa Maria in Trastevere. Had the visitor been farther able to penetrate into the principal chamber of the first floor, on the night of the scene about to be related, he might indeed have found himself well repaid for his trouble.

This chamber, which was of considerable size and altogether devoid of windows, being lighted during the daytime by a skylight, carefully blinded from within, was now duskily illumined by a transparent device inlaid into the end wall and representing the beams of the rising moon gleaming from a sky of azure. The extremity of the room, which fronted the symbol, was semi-circular and occupied by a narrow table, before which moved a tall, shadowy form that paused now and then before a fire of fragrant sandal wood, which burned in a brazen tripod, passing his fingers mechanically, as it would seem, through the bluish flame. In its unsteady flicker the strange figures on the walls, which had defied the decree of Time, seemed to nod fantastically when touched by a fitful ray.

This was Hormazd, the Persian, the former confidant and counsellor of Marozia, in the heyday of her glory. In those days he had held forth in a turret chamber on the summit of Castel San Angelo, where he would read the stars and indulge his studies in the black arts to his heart's content. Driven forth by Alberic, after Marozia's fall, the Persian had taken up his abode in the Trastevere, where he continued to serve those who came to him for advice, or on business that shunned the light of day.

Now and then the Oriental bent his tall, spare form over a huge tome which lay open upon the table, the inscrutable, ascetic countenance with the deep, brilliant eyes seemingly plunged in deep, engrossing thought, but in reality listening intently, as for the approach of some belated caller.

The soft patter of hurried footsteps on the floor of the corridor without soon rewarded his attention. The rustle of a woman's silken garments caused him to give a start of surprise. A heavy curtain was raised and she glided noiselessly into his presence.

The woman's face was covered with a silken vizor, but her coronet of raven hair no less than the matchless figure, outlined against the crimson glow, at once proclaimed her rank.

The first ceremony of silent greeting absolved, the Persian's visitor permitted the black silken cloak which had enveloped her from head to toe, to fall away, revealing a form exquisitely proportioned. The ivory pallor of the throat, which rose like a marble column from matchless shoulders, and the whiteness of the bare arms, seemed even enhanced by the dusky background whose incense-laden pall seemed to oppress the very walls.

"I am trusting you to-night with unreserved confidence," the woman spoke in her rich, vibrant voice. "Many serve me from motives of selfishness and fear. Do you serve me, because I trust you."

She laid her white hand frankly upon his arm and the Persian, isolated above and below the strongest impulses of humanity, shivered under her touch.

"What is it you desire?" he questioned after a pause.

"If you possess the knowledge with which the vulgar credit you," the woman said slowly, not without an air of mockery in her tone, "I hardly need reveal to you the motives which prompted this visit! You knew them, ere I came, even as you knew of my coming!"

"You speak truly," said Hormazd slowly, now completely master of himself. "For even to the hour it was revealed to me!"

The woman scanned him with a searching look.

"Yet I had confided in none!" she said musingly. "Tell me then who I am!"

"You are Theodora!"

"When have we met before?" —

"Not in this life, but in a previous existence. Our souls touched then, predestined to cross each other on a future plane."

She removed her silken vizor and faced him.

The dark eyes at once challenged and besought. No sculptor could have chiselled those features on which a divinity had recklessly squandered all it had to bestow for good or for evil. No painter could have reproduced the face which had wrought such havoc in the hearts of men.

Like summer lightnings in a dark cloudbank, all the emotions of the human soul seemed to have played therein and left it again, forging it in the fires of passion, but leaving it more beautiful, more mysterious than before.

The Oriental regarded her in silence, as she stood before him in the flickering flame of the brazier.

"In some previous existence, you say?" she said with dreamy interest. "Who was I then – and who were you?"

"Two driftless spirits on the driftless sea of eternity," he replied calmly. "Foredoomed to continue our passage till our final destiny be fulfilled."

"And this destiny is known to you?"

"Else I had watched in vain. But you – queen and sorceress – do you believe in the message?"

She pondered.

"I believe," she said slowly, "that we make for ourselves the destiny to which hereafter we must submit. I believe that some dark power can foretell that destiny, and more – compel it!" —

Hormazd bowed ever so slightly. There was a dawning gleam of satire in his brilliant eyes, a glimpse which was not lost on her.

Again the question came.

"What is it you desire?"

Theodora gave an inscrutable smile that imparted to her features a singular softness and beauty, as a ray of sunlight falling on a dark picture will brighten the tints with a momentary warmth of seeming life.

"I was told," she spoke slowly, as if trying to overcome an inward dread, "that you are known in Rome chiefly as being the possessor of some mysterious internal force which, though invisible, is manifest to all who place themselves under your spell! Is it not so?"

The Persian bowed slightly.

"It may be that I have furnished the Romans with something to talk about besides the weather; that I have made a few friends, and an amazing number of enemies – "

"The latter argues in your favor," Theodora interposed. "They say, furthermore, that by this same force you are enabled to disentangle the knots of perplexity that burden the overtaxed brain."

Hormazd nodded again and the sinister gleam of his eyes did not escape Theodora's watchful gaze.

"If this be so," the woman continued, "if you are not an impostor who exhibits his tricks for the delectation of the rabble, or for sordid gain – exert your powers upon me, for something, I know not what, has frozen up the once overflowing fountain of life."

The Oriental regarded her intently.

"You have the wish to be deluded – even into an imaginary happiness?"

Theodora gave a start.

"You have expressed what I but vaguely hinted. It may be that I am tired" – she passed her hand across her brow with a troubled gesture – "or puzzled by some infinite distress of living things. Perchance I am going mad – who knows? But, whatever the cause, you, if report be true, possess the skill to ravish the mind away from its trouble, to transport it to a radiant Elysium of illusions and ecstasies. Do this for me, as you have done it for another, and, whatever payment you demand, it shall be yours!"

She ceased.

Faintly through the silence came the chimes of convent bells from the remote regions of the Aventine, pealing through the fragrant summer night above the deep boom of distant thunder that seemed to come as from the bowels of the earth.

Hormazd gave his interrogator a swift, searching glance, half of pity, half of disdain.

"The great eastern drug should serve your turn," he replied sardonically. "I know of no other means wherewith to stifle the voice of conscience."

Theodora flushed darkly.

"Conscience?" she flashed in resentful accents.

The Persian nodded.

"There is such a thing. Do you profess to be without one?"

Theodora's eyes endeavored to pierce the inscrutable mask before her. The ironical curtness of the question annoyed her.

"Your opinion of me does little honor to your wisdom," she said after a pause.

"A foul wound festers equally beneath silk and sack-cloth," came the dark reply.

"How know you that I desire relief from this imaginary malady?"

The Oriental gave a shrug.

"Why does Theodora come to the haunts of the Persian? Why does she ask him to mock and delude her, as if it were his custom to make dupes of those who appeal to him?"

"And are they not your dupes?" Theodora interposed, her face a deeper pallor than before.

"Of that you shall judge after I have answered your questions," Hormazd returned darkly. "There are but two things in life that will prompt a woman like Theodora to seek aid of one like myself." —

"You arouse my curiosity!"

"Disappointment in power – or love!"

There was a silence.

"Will you help me?"

She was pleading now.

The Oriental sparred for time. It was not his purpose to commit himself at once.

"I am but one who, long severed from the world, has long recognized its vanities. My cures are for the body rather than the soul."

Theodora's face hardened into an expression of scorn.

"Am I to understand that you will do nothing for me?" she said in a tone which convinced the Persian that the time for dallying was past.

The words came slowly from his lips.

"I can promise you neither self-oblivion nor visionary joys. I possess an internal force, it is true, a force which, under proper control, overpowers and subdues the material, and by exerting this I can, if I think it well to do so, release your soul, that inner intelligence which, deprived of its mundane matter, is yourself, from its house of clay and allow it a brief interval of freedom. But – what in that state its experience may be, whether joy or sorrow, I cannot foretell."

"Then you are not the master of the phantoms you evoke?"

"I am merely their interpreter!"

She looked at him steadfastly as if pondering his words.

"And you profess to be able to release the soul from its abode of clay?"

"I do not profess," he said quietly. "I can do so!"

"And with the success of this experiment your power ceases? You cannot tell whether the imprisoned creature will take its course to the netherworld of suffering, or a heaven of delight?"

"The liberated soul must shift for itself."

"Then begin your incantations," Theodora exclaimed recklessly. "Send me, no matter where, so long as I escape from this den of the world, this dungeon with one small window through which, with the death rattle in our throats, we stare vacantly at the blank, unmeaning horror of life. Prove to me that the soul you prattle of exists, and if mine can find its way straight to the mainsprings of this revolving creation, it shall cling to the accursed wheels and stop them, that they may grind out the torture of life no more."

She stood there, dark, defiant, beautiful with the beauty of the fallen angel. Her breath came and went quickly. She seemed to challenge some invisible opponent.

The tall sinewy form by her side watched her as a physician might watch in his patient the workings of a new disease, then Hormazd said in low and tranquil tones:

"You are in the throes of your own overworked emotions. You are seeking to obtain the impossible – "

"Why taunt me?" she flashed. "Cannot your art supply the secret in whose quest I am?"

The Persian bowed, but kept silent.

Again, with the shifting mood, the rare, half-mournful smile shone in Theodora's face.

"Though you may not be conscious of it," she said, laying her white hand on his trembling arm, "something impels me to unburden my heart to you. I have kept silence long."

Hormazd nodded.

"In the world one must always keep silence, veil one's grief and force a smile with the rest. Is it not lamentable to think of all the pent-up suffering, the inconceivably hideous agonies that remain forever unrevealed? Youth and innocence – "

Theodora raised her arm.

"Was I ever – what they call – innocent?" she interposed musingly. "When I was young – alas, how long it seems, though I am but thirty – the dream of my life was love! Perchance I inherited it from my mother. She was a Greek, and she possessed that subtle quality that can never die. What I was – it matters not. What I am – you know!"