Night would come again, and could he trust himself through the long, still night after long speech with Veranilda?
A blacker thought than any he had yet nurtured began to stir in his mind, raising its head like the viper of an hour ago.

Were she but his--his irredeemably?
He tried to see beyond that, but his vision blurred.
Her nature was gentle, timid; the kind of nature, he thought, which subdues itself to the irreparable.

So soft, so sweet, so utterly woman, might she not, thinking herself abandoned by Basil, yield heart and soul to a man whom she saw helpless to resist a passionate love of her?
Or, if this hope deceived him, was there no artifice with which to cover his ill-doing, no piece of guile subtle enough to cloak such daring infamy?
He was in the atrium, standing on the spot where first he had talked with her.

As then, he gazed at the bronze group of the candelabrum; his eyes were fixed on those of Proserpine.
A slave entered and announced to him a visit from one of the priests whom he was going to see when the meeting at the bridge changed his purpose.

The name startled him.