“I fear for you. This morning I saw in the market-place one of the women of Lycabetta. She did not see me, but to see her renewed my fear. If danger should come here ring at this bell,” and he pointed to the great rope on the column by the altar. “It was set here by King Robert the Good, that any man having cause of complaint against the King might ring it and rouse all Syracuse to sit in judgment between sovereign and subject. In all his reign no hand ever tugged at that cord.”
Perpetua looked at it sadly. “Every hand in Syracuse might itch to clasp it in the reign of Robert the Bad.”
There were tears in Robert’s eyes as he echoed her.
“Robert the Bad. You might have loved him,” he said, after a short silence.
Perpetua turned away, for now there were tears in her eyes. “Oh, I know nothing of love,” she said.
Robert saw her sadness and combated his own to cheer her. “Is it not strange,” he asked, “your loveliness knows nothing of love while my unloveliness is cunning in love-wisdom? Year in and year out I have watched the world a-wooing—shepherd and shepherdess under the hawthorn hedge, knight and dame in the rose-bower, king and queen on the marble terrace.”
She turned to him again and there were now no tears in her eyes; grief should not conquer her and she spoke brightly, entering into the spirit of his speech.
“A prodigal preface. But what is the sum of all your wisdom?”
The wild fancy which had come into Robert’s brain when he spoke of love-wisdom grew with the moment into a wild resolve. The lips of the fool should interpret the heart of the King. He motioned to her to sit on the lowest of the steps that led to the altar place, and when she had done so he seated himself thereon. The sunlight fell between them and lay, a pool of many colors at their feet. Neither of them knew that the little side door, which led from the quiet street, opened a little, allowing a woman to slip into the church and vanish behind the shadow of a pillar.