Once in the moonlit darkness of the gardens, maid and man took hands and ran as swiftly as they could through the scented night. They could not go overfast, and it was the maid’s hand that helped the man, not the man’s hand the maid. Perpetua was as fleet as a deer, but the degraded King limped like the fool whose likeness had been flung upon him, and Perpetua had to slacken her speed in order that he might keep pace with her. But there were no signs of pursuit from the house of Lycabetta. The terror of the plague was so great that Robert’s mantle was an unquestionable defence. The most licentious youth in Syracuse would not go near the loveliest woman if he had the least reason to believe that she had been but lightly touched by a plague-spotted garment. Limping and running, their shadows streaming behind them on the white path that threaded the cypresses, they reached the golden gates which opened without demur to Robert’s summons in the King’s name, and in another instant they were speeding on the level highway to the city. No word passed between them; the dominant thought of each was to get as far as might be, as soon as might be, from the place sacred to the strange Venus.

Suddenly, as they reached the outskirts of the city, Robert tugged at Perpetua’s hand and stayed her flight. In an angle of a house at the corner of a street there was a niche. In the niche was the image of a saint, and at the feet of the image the little flame of a votive lamp flickered in the soft air. Robert dropped on his knees and buried his face in his hands. Perpetua immediately knelt by his side, and the two fugitives prayed silently, earnestly for some moments. Perpetua’s simple prayer was first that Heaven might be pleased to deliver the fool from his delusion, and next that she might be strengthened to face and accept her threatened fate. Robert’s prayers were incoherent, confused supplications for pity, for pardon, whirling with ejaculations of gratitude for having been permitted to rescue the maid from her enemies.

Perpetua rose first, and stood, observing with infinite pity how the deformed body of the fool shook with the storm of emotions that seemed to convulse him. Suddenly Robert sprang to his feet and faced her.

“Did you hear nothing?” he asked. Perpetua shook her head reassuringly, for she thought that he meant the sound of pursuing feet, but Robert persisted.

“Did you not hear a voice that said, ‘He will cast down the mighty from their seats?’”

“I heard nothing,” Perpetua answered, wondering; then in the darkness the thought of their threatened doom came upon her anew like a black and icy shadow.

“Is there no cure for the plague?” she asked, faintly, her face strained towards his. She almost hated herself for asking; better to die of the plague than to live at the pleasure of Hildebrand. But she was young, and life had been bright. To her astonishment her companion answered her question with a laugh that twisted his thin cheeks fantastically:

“You need not fear the plague, child,” he said; and as he spoke his voice sounded kinder than she had ever heard it. “My cloak was my own clean mantle, and came from no dead sailor’s carcass. I played on their terrors as I played on the lute-strings. I knew that a whisper of the plague would palsy their hearts, and I conquered them with a lying tale.” He added, in a graver tone: “For the which falsehood I have but now prayed Heaven to forgive me. I hope my one good deed may be pardoned to one in whom there is so much to pardon.”

Perpetua was amazed at the change that had come over the fool. He seemed saner, gentler, and, as she looked at him now in the moonlight, his features did not show so wholly repulsive as she had first esteemed them. Robert read the amazement in her eyes.

“Child,” he said, “do you truly trust me now?”

She extended her hands to him frankly, her heart swelling with gratitude, big with the two-fold joy of escape from the house of Lycabetta and release from the terror of the plague.

“I do,” she answered, “with all my heart.”

Robert caught at her outstretched hands, and, dropping on his knees in the causeway, kissed them reverentially. Then he rose and faced her, and as he did so it seemed to the maiden that his body was really less distorted than it appeared on a first view.

“Perpetua,” he said, and he named her name very tenderly. “Perpetua, I am going to take you to a place of safety. Such women as Lycabetta, such men as Hildebrand, are ever to be feared; we have fooled them for the hour, but they may learn that they have been befooled, and the knowledge will make them revengeful. There is an ancient church in Syracuse, by the sea, whose crypt communicates with the catacombs that burrow into the rock. Hieronymus is its priest, famous as a good and holy man. He will shelter you, protect you; if there be danger you can hide in the catacombs, where our enemies might seek in vain for a century. Come, shall we go to Hieronymus?”

“Let us go,” she said; then suddenly: “But you, you too are in danger. The King’s anger, the anger of Hildebrand—you must evade these.”

A melancholy smile came over the foolish face and lent it a kind of grace.

“Perhaps the good father may find some nook for me. I do not think his heart will be hard, even to me, a sinner. Come.”

He turned as if to lead the way, then paused and spoke to her again.

“Perpetua,” he said. “Your trust in the fool”—the girl noticed that he shuddered as he spoke, and she wondered—“your trust in the fool is not unwisely placed. In the name of that trust, ask me, I pray you, no questions of my past. Let us believe between us that the fool Diogenes”—and again the convulsive shudder wrung him—“was newly born to-day.”

“I will do as you wish,” she answered, full of amazement at the change which had come to his warped wits.

He took her hand and guided her through the streets of Syracuse to the little church by the sea. The moon shone brightly on them as they went, the moon which swayed Syracuse, making lovers kiss, poets dream, philosophers sigh, children sport, dogs bay. It guided them, benignly, to their goal.