“Perpetua!” Robert pleaded.
But she went on speaking, unheeding him, as if she were indeed still under the influence of a dream.
“I was again in the green wood; the fountain bubbled at my feet. Strong hands parted the curtain of green leaves, and through the gap came sunlight—sunlight and the hunter with eyes like mountain lakes; and as I moved to meet him the vision vanished. Are you a wizard?”
Robert could now command himself.
“No,” he said; “only a fool who teases his soul with Elysian fancies. But the strings of the lute have snapped; they were made of heartstrings, and a thought too fine for the work. I will play that air no more.”
She did not seem to notice the sorrow in his voice; she longed for solitude. “Leave me a little while to myself,” she entreated. “I want to be alone and pray.”
Robert looked at her wistfully; for a few golden moments he had known youth again, and hope, and the speech of passionate love, had seen the woman he worshipped come to him under the spell of his words. Now he was again God’s outcast.
“The will of Heaven be done,” he murmured to himself; then to Perpetua he said, quietly, “When you pray, pray for your poor servant, for I think your pure voice must soar at once into the courts of Heaven.”
Perpetua smiled kindly at him. “Dear Diogenes,” she said; and with that name ringing in his ears Robert went slowly out through the sea-door. Perpetua turned and knelt at the altar, praying,
“Dear Mother of Mercy, help me to forget the hunter’s face!”