"You have never loved or you would not reason so," he argued. "Let me look into your eyes. I think you love me a little."

He was very close to her now, but she did not surrender to his lips or his eyes. A kind of wonder was growing in her face, but she met his gaze as firmly as she answered his words.

"I have never loved, and yet I know what love might be. The spring wind sighs in these forests, and the nightingales are my friends. Though I know only of the world by hearsay, I know that men and women have done great things for love's sake, and are remembered with songs and tears. I am not afraid of love."

Her eyes were smiling as she spoke. Life seemed clear and easy to her.

Life seemed clear and easy to her suitor; but his clarity, his ease, were not those of the mountain maid, and he misunderstood her, weighing her soul in false scales. He wooed her now with a low, triumphant challenge.

"I believe you love me a little."

She baffled his challenge by her immediate frankness. The powers of life were not to be denied in shyness by a child who might have been a nymph of Artemis.

"I think I might love you a great deal. I will love you with all my heart if you know how to win me. I will surrender my soul to my true lord and lover when he comes."

Her eyes softened as she made her sweet confession, and his cheeks burned to hear her. But her purity only tempted him without touching him. Again he made to clasp her in his arms.

"He has come. Kiss me, Perpetua!" he cried, exultingly; but she flitted from his reach as subtly as a shadow shifting with the sun, and there was command in her voice as she motioned to him to hold aloof.

"Wait! I am not to be won in a whirlwind. Great love is gentle love, hunter."

He could have cursed at her for avoiding him, yet the avoidance spurred him to succeed, and his words were tender as caresses.

"When I clasp you in my arms you will forget to be so wise."

The fair girl knitted her brows in a frown at his overboldness. For his life the King could not tell why he refrained from again attempting to embrace her--and yet he did refrain, standing and listening while she reproved him, and to his ears there seemed to be something of irony and something of mirth in her smooth, cool tones.

"Then you shall not clasp me in your arms till I am sure of myself and you."

Robert wrestled with an unwelcome sense of reverence. Surely it was madness to be baffled by a country maid. He held out his comely hands, he commanded every appealing intonation of his musical voice.

"Child," he cried, "you shall not deny me now. I am your hunter, sweet, and you my quarry. Be happy, being mine."

He moved upon her as he spoke, trusting to charm her with the spell of speech that never yet had known defeat. But the girl stretched out her hand to stay him, and he paused, angry and yet curious to see how far she would carry contradiction.

"Stand back!" she said. "I am not afraid of love. I am not afraid of you. But your voice is not the voice of the woods, and your eyes shine with another light. You cannot snare me so."

He saw that she distrusted him; he saw that she did not fear him; he knew that he had not won her, yet believed himself near to the winning.

"If you love me--" Robert cried.

The girl stretched out her arms to the wide sky in protest.

"If I love you!" Her arms dropped to her sides and she continued, sadly, "I have dreamed of you very often, but I never dreamed of you thus."

"All lovers love fiercely," Robert insisted, passionately.

Perpetua shook her head. "I do not believe you."

Chafing to find himself so powerless to soften her, Robert made a gesture of despair.

"Ah!" he sighed, "we waste irrevocable seconds that should be spent in kisses."

Perpetua moved a little closer to him. The man's pain in his voice stirred the woman's pity in her heart, and she spoke more tenderly than she had spoken for some time.

"Hunter, if you love me, you shall tell my father your tale and he will be your friend as he is mine, and we will marry and live and die in the woodland."

She stood before him, beautiful as the living image of a goddess offering herself to a mortal with Olympian simplicity. So might Oenone have willed to wed with Paris. Robert stared at her, amazed, confounded.

"I cannot marry you," he protested. "You are the executioner's daughter."

Now, indeed, the warm color of her cheeks grew warmer and her eyes darkened with indignation.

"My father is a good and honest man, but were I the child of a robber, were I a fosterling of a wolf of the woods, I am a woman--the woman you say you love."

Robert waved her words away disdainfully, peevishly.

"I cannot marry you."

Perpetua's cheeks paled and her lips quivered a little, and her eyes were moist beneath their lowered lids, but she answered him as firmly as before and more sadly.

"Good-bye, then. I am not sorry you came, for I cherish sweet thoughts of you, but I shall be glad to see you go."

She turned as if to glide into the woods, but Robert stayed her, calling to her in a voice of loud command.

"I will not lose you!" he cried. "If I cannot win you as the simple hunter, I will command you as the King. I am Robert of Sicily."

As he spoke he slipped the green mantle from his arms and shoulders, flung it from him, and stood before her in the royal garments of the King. Perpetua gazed in astonishment at the rich habit, at splendor such as she had never seen.

"You are the King?" she whispered.

[Illustration: "I AM ROBERT OF SICILY"]

Robert answered proudly, confident now of reward.

"I am, indeed, the King."

Perpetua looked on him with the same fearless honor wherewith she would have faced some monster in the forest.

"If you are the King, what have you to do with me?" she asked.

Robert answered her joyously, passionately.

"You shall be my loveliest mistress now, my loveliest memory forever."

But even as he spoke the fire in his blood was chilled by the scorn and wrath in Perpetua's eyes.

"God pity and God pardon you," she prayed. "You are called Robert the Bad by honest men. Be called so always by clean women!" Her outstretched right hand seemed to hurl her imprecation into his brain. Blind fury seized upon him.

"You play the fool with me!" he said, and advanced upon her only to recoil as she slipped her hand to her girdle and drew the long, keen knife that rested there.