Robert, left alone, went on muttering to himself, as he shuffled restlessly up and down. Through all the bewildering discord of his thoughts the face of Perpetua seemed to shine clearly, like the light on a pharos to a striver in an angry sea. Where so many had denied him, she had recognized him. Lycabetta had, indeed, done as much, but Lycabetta was the gift of the past; Perpetua was the promise of the future. She and he would go down hand in hand into the streets of Syracuse. They would rouse the people, who would surely fight for such a king, for such a queen. They would sweep the palace clean of their enemies and rule in Sicily forever.

As, body shambling, mind rambling, he drifted thus about the room, the curtains behind the statue of Venus parted, and Perpetua appeared in the opening, standing between the two Moorish slaves. Then the curtains fell, the slaves disappeared, and Perpetua was left alone with the seeming fool. She recognized him at once, and the fire of hope flickered higher in her heart as she came down the steps and ran eagerly to meet him. He was but a withered fool, but still he was a man and might have pity, might have generosity, might have courage.

“Help me,” she cried, holding out her hands to him. To her surprise the thing she took to be the fool Diogenes advanced as eagerly to her.

“You are free, Perpetua,” he cried. “Free, if you will be my queen.”

Perpetua recoiled. “Your queen?” she gasped, but Robert gave her no chance of further speech, for he went on hotly, whipping his blood with the recital of his wrongs.

“Traitors have taken my throne, traitors have stolen my crown; traitors bar the gates of my palace in my face and laugh at me through the bars; there is a false king in Syracuse, but he shall not usurp unchallenged.”

Perpetua’s heart grew cold. “Heaven help me,” she thought in her despair, as she watched the wild gestures and listened to the wild words of her companion. “He is crazed beyond all cure.”

Robert, in the midst of his vehemence, saw the sorrow in her face, saw that she moved away as he advanced to her.

“Why do you shrink from me?” he asked. “I mean you no ill. You shall be queen; I swear you shall be queen. Come with me,” and he held out his hand with an air of royal condescension which contrasted ridiculously enough with his grotesque outside. Perpetua turned away from him with a little moan. “Alas, poor wretch,” she sighed, her pity for his plight for the moment overpowering her sense of her own peril. Robert did not catch her words, but he saw her trouble and wondered at it.

“What do you fear?” he questioned, tenderly. “I am the King.”

Perpetua clasped her hands together in an agony of compassion for the unhappy fool, and for herself, more helpless and alone through his coming.

“Dear Heaven,” she prayed, “help me to mend this madness.”

“Do you still shun me?” Robert asked, angrily, fretted by the girl’s resistance. “Am I young, smooth, strong, comely to so little purpose? Is it a light thing to be a king like me?”

Perpetua listened to his ravings in despair. It seemed so horrible to see the ugly fool stand there mouthing his own praises, his kingship. As she shrank from him, her averted eyes fell on the silver mirror which Lycabetta had left lying upon her couch. A sudden wild hope came into Perpetua’s mind. Though the man’s brain might be moonstruck, his eyes might still be honest, and a glance might bring him back to sanity. At least the test was worth trying. She sprang to the couch, caught up the mirror, and, turning to Robert as he followed her, thrust, with extended arms, the mirror before his face. Had he been struck by lightning his advance had not stayed more surely.

“God in heaven,” he cried, in a dreadful voice, that made the girl shiver to hear. He snatched the mirror from her and stared into the shining field, reading there the hideous lineaments of the fool Diogenes. His wild eyes turned from the mirror to her and back again.

“What damnable trick is this? I am bewitched, for the fool’s face leers at me. Some devil reigns in Sicily, who has put this stain upon me.”

The tears came into Perpetua’s eyes for the blighted wretch who could thus deny his own image. Robert saw the tears and guessed their meaning.

“Woman,” he entreated. “Can you not pierce through this glamour? I am, indeed, the King. For holy charity believe me. Though it has pleased Heaven or Hell to change me thus, I am the King.”

He held out his hands to her in piteous supplication, and for a moment for very pity’s sake there came the temptation into Perpetua’s mind to humor the poor ruin. But she thrust the temptation from her, and sadly turned her head. Robert, with a groan, flung himself upon the couch and sat there staring into the mirror, trying to understand the calamity that had come upon him and blotted out his form. In the shining glass the wrinkled, twisted face of Diogenes twitched viciously. Blind rage overswept him, and he shook his fist at the foul reflection, screaming madly:

“I am the King! I am the King!”

Perpetua suffered with him as she would have suffered with some wounded forest beast; even sorrowed more, for if the forest beast were a dumb thing and could not tell its woes, the fool could speak, and his speech was worse than silence. Her compassionate womanhood sent her to his side, and she touched him gently on the shoulder, trying to whisper some words of sympathy, of pity.

But at the touch of her hand, at the sound of her voice, Robert flung the mirror from him, and, springing to his feet, faced the girl with evil in his eyes. Ugly thoughts crowded upon him, wicked impulses pricked his blood. If he was thus deformed, thus degraded, thus stripped of his youth, his beauty, and his power, at least he would not suffer alone; at least he, the outcast, had one at his command. The girl who had denied the King was in the power of the fool.

“Do you sorrow for me,” he cried—“for me, the great King, the fair King? Keep sorrow for yourself; for, if my body be blighted, yours is smooth and soft, and at my mercy.”

He made a snatch at her, but his wild eyes had warned her, and she eluded his grasp. She felt herself indeed helpless, in such a place and at a madman’s mercy, but she prayed and faced him with steadfast eyes. He moved slowly towards her, gloating over his purpose.

“Now you are mine,” he said. “Doomed as I am, degraded as I am, you are mine; you cannot escape me. Cling to your bridegroom, bride.”

Perpetua slowly drew back from him, and there was that in her steady gaze which, in spite of himself, restrained him.

“God, grant me the key to a madman’s pity,” she prayed; then to the fool she pleaded: “Sir, in all hearts Heaven has set some spot of gentleness. I am a woman set about by enemies, helpless but not hopeless. If ever any woman’s face was sacred in your eyes, if ever any woman’s speech was music to your ears, be gentle and befriend me.”

Robert laughed a malign laugh. He seemed to revenge his own ruin in triumphing over the child.

“My heart is a harp in a tree, and it sings to women’s voices,” he said. “But you must whisper me love-words if you think to win me.”

Perpetua answered him bravely, hoping for Heaven’s help in the words she might choose to soothe the madman.

“I will not kneel to you, for my knees bend only to Heaven. But I will speak you fair. If you were shapely, strong, and beautiful, with the white fire of knighthood glowing in your soul, you would laugh at death to pluck the meanest woman in the world from such a snare as mine is.”

Her speech stabbed Robert with a fresh fury at the thought of his transformation, and he answered her, grinning like a snarling beast:

“If I were shapely, strong, and beautiful, I would do as I will do. The powers that torture me have flung a jewel at my feet, and I will wear it till I weary of it. You are in my power, saintliness! Discrowned, deformed, dishonored, over you I can still be king.”

Perpetua shook her head proudly.

“Do not cheat yourself. I am not in your power.”

Robert laughed again.

“Am I deceived? I thought you were a prisoner here. I thought your jailers flung you to me for my pleasure. I thought just now you were my suppliant. Will these walls vanish at your wish? Will those hearts melt at your pleadings? Will I deny myself delight? You are in my power.”

Perpetua watched him as calmly as a martyr of old days watched the advance of the doomsman.

“I am not in your power. I am young, and I love life, and would be glad to grow old in the world’s way. But I would rather die than live with any stain of shame.”

Robert retorted swiftly, mocking her, yet conscious, against his will, of unfamiliar admiration of opposition to his will.

“You foolish ermine, Death’s angel does not come at a girl’s call.”

“She who finds life hateful will find the means to end it,” Perpetua said, proudly.

“Is this your virtue?” Robert jeered. “May meekness do self-murder?”

Perpetua lifted her tearless eyes towards the painted roof, fretted with pagan emblems.

“When I appear before the court of Heaven,” she answered, quietly, “I think I will find pardon for that sin.”

All manner of strange thoughts were contending for the supremacy of Robert’s reason. Was that an aureole, strangely luminous, about her head, or only the wealth of her red hair? Was she, indeed, as brave as her brave phrases?

“I take you at your word,” he said, more mildly. “Here is that which can set you free from all of us.”

He drew the fool’s dagger from his girdle and held it to her by its blade.

“Have you the heart to drive this home?” he asked.

Perpetua seized the hilt eagerly.

“Ay, with all my heart, into my heart,” she cried, with a confidence that he could not question. “You are the gentlest tyrant in the world, and I will pray for you in paradise.” She pressed the weapon with both hands to her breast and bowed her head.

Robert felt certain that she would keep her word, yet the evil in him drove him to taunt her. “You do not strike,” he said.

Perpetua lifted her bright eyes, and he read in them the joy of a white soul escaping shame. On his ears her words came like saintly music. “I do but commend my spirit to its Maker. When it is done, of your clemency say a prayer by me. Farewell!”

She raised the weapon in the air, and Robert’s troubled soul assured him that she meant to strike, that she meant to die. Awful influences seemed to struggle around him, darkness striving with light. He caught at the light. Voices were calling in his ears, urging evil, urging good. He caught at the good.

“Stop!” he called. “I think your hand has driven a devil from my heart. You are a saint; you have a soldier’s courage; you have conquered me. I am your servant.”

Perpetua hid the knife in her bosom and came close to Robert. “Will you truly help me? Let me see your eyes. Yes, I believe you. How may we escape?”

Robert drew his withered body proudly up. “I will command them to set you free.”

“Alas! poor soul, they will not obey you,” Perpetua said, sadly.

Robert fell from his high estate in a second. “Oh, God, I had forgotten,” he groaned. He clasped his hands; his lips murmured a prayer for strength to bear his cross, for strength to serve this woman. For the second time in his sinful life he was thinking of another than himself, and that other was Perpetua. He turned to her with what he meant to be a smile. “Then we are weak things, you and I, a fool and a woman, and we must fight force with craft. Do you trust me?”

“I trust you,” Perpetua said, simply.

Robert came close to her and whispered in her ear. “Seem to consent to this cruel jest of theirs. I will say I have cast a spell upon you, and that you can refuse me nothing. When I command you to follow me, say that you obey. Once you are outside these gates, you will be safe. Do you understand?”

Perpetua looked at him with shining eyes. “I understand that I have found a friend.”

The words seemed to burn Robert’s heart with purifying fire. “A slave who will serve you faithfully,” he whispered. “Hush, some one is coming.”