"Keep away from me!" she warned him. "For I am strong and young, and I might kill you." Her face was pitifully pale now in its great sorrow, but the determination in her eyes menaced more than steel.

"I think I could master you," Robert sneered, but he kept his place, watching her.

"Then you should kill me," Perpetua sighed. "And that might be best, for you have destroyed my beautiful dream."

She turned as she spoke, and, casting her weapon from her, to fall upon the soft grass, she ran into the wood. For a moment the King stood still, stupidly conscious of the humming of the bees, stupidly staring after the flying child. Then he stirred himself into pursuit, crying, "Stay, fool, stay!" but desisted instantly, for the girl was as fleet as a fawn, and could run surely where his feet would stumble. Already she was out of sight in the thick of the trees.

"Go, fool, go!" he shouted. "If you are crazy enough to repel greatness!" And flinging himself upon the fallen column, he buried his face in his hands to keep back the bitter tears.

V

LYCABETTA

Lying there in his wild rage, he babbled to himself.

"Am I mad? Shall I, Sicily, be defied by this cold Amazon? She shall burn as a witch for this; she shall burn! She has put some spell upon me, and she shall burn for my burning. I would not have her now, but she shall die in pain."

Drowned in his frenzy of thwarted passion and baffled anger, the King was unaware that a woman had entered the open space from the mountain-path, and was moving with light steps across the grasses towards the spot where he sat and ate his heart. The new-comer was beautiful with a beauty so different from that of the girl whose kingdom was the hill-top that few to whom the one seemed perfect would have found the other all-conquering fair. Tall and imperious as some evil empress of old Rome, her black hair bound with ivy leaves of gold, her fine body draped in strangely dyed silks--snake-colored, blue and green and golden-scaled--that shot a shimmering iridescence with every movement of the limbs, whose whiteness their transparency rather betrayed than veiled, she trod the earth with such an air as Balkis may have worn when she came a-visiting Solomon. The painters of the antique world would have welcomed in that voluptuous flesh, in the poppy of her mouth, in the midnight of those eyes that glowed with the fires of Thessalian incantations, their ideal for some image of the goddess of all-conquering desire. The Sophists of the antique world would have read her story charactered in every lithe line, in every appealing motion, and saluted in her the priestess of sheer appetite, for whom the gods were dead, indeed, yet living in their material form--Dionysus as wine, Aphrodite as the act of love, Apollo as the kindling sunlight.

As Balkis came to seek Solomon, so this woman came to the mountain-summit seeking a king. But she had thought to greet him coming out of the gray church, and it was with a start of surprise that she saw the glittering figure crouched in an attitude of woe upon the fallen column, and recognized in that image of abasement the Prince of Naples, the young lord of Sicily. Swiftly, but with the stately grace of those who of old time moved and allured in the streets of Rome when the feast of Flora was towards, she passed through the thick grasses to the column and the King. She knew it was he by his habit, by the familiar form, though she could not see his face, and she wondered why he sat there alone and with such show of grief. She was by his side without his hearing her, and it was not until she spoke that he knew of her presence.

"My lord!" she said, softly, in a voice as sweet as the voices of the women who sang the praises of the mystic Venus in the secret gardens of Cyrene.

Robert jerked his head from his hands, startled to find that he was no longer alone, but, when he saw who it was that had interrupted his meditations, wonder and joy contended in his countenance.

"Lycabetta!" he cried; "Lycabetta, by the gods! Why is the priestess of love on these summits?"

Lycabetta had dropped on her knees at his feet in Oriental abasement, but her face was raised to his and her eyes were lamps of passion.

"Sire," she sighed. "If I disturb your Majesty's quiet, sign and I will retire."

Robert, bending to her, caught her by the shoulders, and, lifting her to her feet, kissed her mouth.

"No, no!" he cried. "Stay, fair priestess of the ungovernable flesh.

What brought you here?"

Lycabetta knitted her white fingers together beseechingly.

"Your Majesty is a most Christian king. Will you promise me your pardon if I confess to a pagan superstition?"

Robert kissed her again and laughed. Her trained senses knew the unreality of his kisses, of the words with which he answered her.

"Exquisite idol, I could pardon you much for the sake of your kisses.

What bountiful wind has blown you to the height of this Sicilian hillock?"

Lycabetta answered him humbly, the false humility enhancing her exuberant beauty.

"When I and my women followed your Majesty from Naples--for what could such poor sunflowers as we are do without our sun?--I learned that on this hill there stood long ago a temple to Venus, very propitious to women of my kind, who came and prayed there. Your father suffered no daughters of delight to ply their trade in Syracuse, and so in gratitude for our happy restoration I came to kneel in the ancient, sacred dust.

My litter bore me part of the way, till the path became too steep and I had even to climb like a peasant or abandon my purpose."

Robert smiled condescension.

"Dear goddess of exquisite desires, our piety has power to pardon your paganism. I am king over the pagan shrine as over the Christian altar.

But, before I absolve you, I have a command to lay upon you." His smile became cruel as he spoke, for a scheme of revenge, exquisitely evil, possessed him.

"Your slave listens," Lycabetta said, lifting her hands to her jewelled forehead in sign of submission.

Robert flung his arm around her and drew her down beside him on the column.

"Lycabetta," he said. "If I know you well, you are a creature of little scruple, to whom what fools call virtue is a soundless word, and virginity but an unpierced pearl of price in the market." He paused for a moment, weighing his revenge, tasting it, finding it sweet to savor.

"To-night I will deliver into your care a young girl, proud of her purity, strong in her simple innocence. It shall be your task to make her into a courtesan like yourself, shaming and staining the flower of her girlhood into a flaming rose of vice. You can do this?"

"It is an easy task, sire."

Robert shook his head, and the cruelty in his face deepened.

"You will not find it easy. I think she will resist you. I know she will resist you. Conquer her resistance by what means you please. I shall not question them." His voice broke into a scream of rage. "Break her spirit, degrade her body, slay her soul, and when she is as I would have her be, send me word that I may come and laugh at her."

Lycabetta watched him curiously.

"It shall be done, sire," she said, dispassionately.

"She is angel-fair. Fools would say she was angel-good--fools who believe in angels. She will plead with the speech of angels. You must be pitiless."

Lycabetta shrugged her shoulders. In her heart she wondered if the King were losing his wits.

"Were she my sister, sire, your whim should be my law. Trust me, I shall make her worthy of our ancient rites. But, sire, forgive me if I doubt this fierce resistance. We women are all alike in the end."

Robert turned away from her with a stifled groan.

"I thought so till this morning," he said, heavily.

Lycabetta guessed at the secret and pricked with a question.

"Surely this moon-flower never defied you, sire?"

Instantly the King turned on her, his fair face so hideous with fury that Lycabetta slipped from his side and cowered before him.

"Silence, jade!" he snarled, beastlike. "If you play with me, I will nail you naked to your own door for Syracusan clowns to mock at."

Lycabetta grovelled in the grass at his feet.

"Forgiveness, sire," she begged.