Robert waved his hands angrily to banish the bright eyes, the bright voices, the bright bodies. They were supple and servile enough, but he did not need them then.

"Dismiss these women," he ordered. "I do not come for them."

Lycabetta thanked him with a deep salutation, dropping her body almost to the ground in mocking reverence.

"You came for me, sire?" she asserted. Robert shook his head and beckoned her, and she glided towards him, while her women huddled together at the back of the hall, quivering with mirth at the sport of fool-baiting.

"No, sweeting," Robert said, gravely. "No. We have shared rose-red hours; you are made very comely; but there is one here more beautiful than you--than all the world."

Even from the mouth of a derided fool it is never delightful for loveliness to be told that it is outshone. Lycabetta's lips tightened a little as she asked, "Which is she, sire?"

In her heart she promised herself that when the King did come she would use her interest to gain master fool the grace of a score of stripes.

But Robert, not noticing an irritation which he would not have heeded if he had seen it, went on in his most royal manner:

"The mountain maid we flung to you. I have somewhat turned my thoughts.

Bring her to me. I think I will make her Queen of Sicily when I have overthrown my enemies."

Lycabetta found it hard not to laugh in the fool's face for his antic assumption of the regal carriage, but her mind seemed instantly illuminated with knowledge. Now she understood the presence of the fool in her palace. This was Robert's ugliest revenge. He had sent this hideous thing to prey upon Perpetua, and Lycabetta applauded. What degradation more cruel could be found for stubborn purity.

"Do, sire," she cried, delightedly, clapping her hands. Robert turned away from her and walked moodily up and down the room, his vexed brain a chaos of conflicting purposes. Lycabetta moved towards her women and beckoned to Hypsipyle, who hastened to her side.

"A brave jest," she said. "The King, whom Heaven preserve for us, his lovers, has sent this grimacing fool here to plague and shame the girl whom his Majesty once was pleased to love and now is pleased to hate. It is a dear revenge and worthy of a great king. The deformed evil thing will make the girl as evil as himself ere he be done with her. Bid the others begone and bring the girl here."

Hypsipyle glanced at the twisted figure limping across the hall. "I would not like her lover," she sneered; then, hurrying to her companions, she and they vanished through the curtains. Lycabetta turned to Robert.

"Sire," she said, "I will send your Majesty his mountain maid." Robert stopped in his shambling walk and stared at her. A thousand wild thoughts were warring in his burning brain, and the interruption irked him.

"Very well," he muttered. "Leave me. I have much to think of--how to meet this treason."

Lycabetta saluted deeply and left the room to join her women in the cool colonnades of the garden. She was willing enough that the King should wreak his revenge upon the captive in whatever fashion best pleased him.

It might have been amusing to tame the girl herself, but it would certainly have been troublesome; and it was less trouble to wander in the rose-strewn galleries among the painted pillars, entwined with Lysidice or Hypsipyle, whispering strange songs and feeding on strange thoughts. There was even no desire in Lycabetta's mind to witness unseen through silken curtains the wooing of fool and maid. If Perpetua was passable for a nymph, Diogenes was too ugly for a satyr, and the sight of anything ugly was physically repulsive to Lycabetta. She would have beheld with composure any shame or suffering that could be inflicted upon Perpetua so long as those who inflicted shame and suffering were themselves fair to see, comely women or comely men. But since it had suited the King's pleasure to place the task of punishing Perpetua in the hands of a hideous fool, a crippled, twisted thing, there was no pleasure left in the sport for Lycabetta. By-and-by she would learn how the fool had fared; in the mean time the young moon rode high in heaven, the gardens were rich with a thousand odors, and the voices of her companions were very sweet.

X

THE TWO VOICES

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.