concrete shape of this beautiful child, then how could he wave
it aside as if it had never been? All her instincts and her intimate
knowledge of the man told her that even her charm and her influence
might fail under such circumstances to save her from ruin. Her divorce
would be as easy to him as her elevation had been. She was balanced upon
a giddy pinnacle, the highest in the world, and yet the higher the
deeper the fall. Everything that earth could give was now at her feet.
Was she to risk the losing of it all--for what? For a weakness which was
unworthy of an Empress, for a foolish new-born spasm of love, for that
which had no existence within her in the morning? How could she be so
foolish as to risk losing such a substance for such a shadow?

"Leave it to me," said the brown watchful face above her.

"Must it be--death?"

"There is no real safety outside. But if your heart is too merciful,
then by the loss of sight and speech----"

She saw in her mind the white-hot iron approaching those glorious eyes,
and she shuddered at the thought.

"No, no! Better death than that!"

"Let it be death then. You are wise, great Empress, for there only is
real safety and assurance of silence."

"And the monk?"

"Him also."

"But the Holy Synod! He is a tonsured priest. What would the Patriarch
do?"

"Silence his babbling tongue. Then let them do what they will. How are
we of the palace to know that this conspirator, taken with a dagger in
his sleeve, is really what he says?"

Again she shuddered and shrank down among the cushions.

"Speak not of it, think not of it," said the eunuch. "Say only that you
leave it in my hands. Nay, then, if you cannot say it, do but nod your
head, and I take it as your signal."

In that instant there flashed before Theodora's mind a vision of all her
enemies, of all those who envied her rise, of all whose hatred and
contempt would rise into a clamour of delight could they see the
daughter of the bearward hurled down again into that abyss from which
she had been dragged. Her face hardened, her lips tightened, her little
hands clenched in the agony of her thought.

"Do it!" she said.

In an instant, with a terrible smile, the messenger of death hurried
from the room. She groaned aloud, and buried herself yet deeper amid the
silken cushions, clutching them frantically with convulsed and twitching
hands.

The eunuch wasted no time, for this deed, once done, he became--save for
tha