With a cry of anguish she dragged at the clamps in a frantic impulse to hide her painted face; for there, upon his horse, erect and handsome, and sad past words, sat Trecenito, looking at her.
For a moment their eyes met, but only for a moment. She saw him give a sort of shudder of disgust. She saw him turn with a bitter laugh to Captain Pertinax, who rode behind him, and heard him say of her a thing so terrible that it seemed to drive the very life from her heart. Like one in a swoon, she saw a vision of her angel angrily spurring his horse, and knew he had dashed away furiously out of the square with Pertinax at his heels.
CHAPTER XXI. HUNTER AND HUNTED.
"But when they knew she was good as she was fair,
Then homage to the maid they paid."
Kophetua was naturally of a much too chivalrous disposition to suffer himself to be guided far by the impulse to which his sudden meeting with Penelophon had given rise. Indeed, before he had ridden half a mile he began to find his conduct inexcusable. He fully believed the story of the beggar-maid's light behaviour which had been so carefully prepared for his ears; but to see so sudden and shocking a confirmation of her wantonness had thrown him off his balance.
Now he was recovering himself, and he felt how unworthily of his philosophy he was acting. He was foolishly resenting as a crime an action which was the natural and almost inevitable outcome of a woman's contemptible nature. This girl had made a ridiculous fool of him, to be sure; but that was no reason why he should forget his self-respect. She was in trouble. No matter who or what she was, he must see her out of it. It was a rule of life with him, and, as a philosopher, he must observe his rules. They are not things to be broken with impunity.
Such was the reason he gave himself for reining in his horse and calling Captain Pertinax to his side. Yet it was hardly the real cause of his change of purpose. Kophetua had lost faith in himself and all the world. The lofty ideals of his romantic youth were withered and trodden under foot. He thought, like other men, that because they grew no longer green and vigorous in the ruined garden of his soul, that all such things for him had perished. He knew not how the flowers which once we valued highest, and whose savour seemed our very life, will fall and wither and be lost a while, only that forms of a beauty and fragrance beyond all we knew before may blossom out of their decay. So the King's good purpose sprang up and bore its flowers, but he knew not why. He remembered not how he himself had enriched with noble aspirations the soil in which it grew, nor ever guessed from what dead ideals its roots drew nourishment, deep down within his heart, in the grave where his boyhood lay buried.