Robert put his arm affectionately round his companion’s neck.
“I tell you, Hildebrand,” he said, earnestly, “my heart sings as it has never sung since its earliest love-flutter. I feel like a stainless god in a sacred garden, listening for the first time to the dear madness of the nightingale. No subtle Neapolitan ever stirred me as this wood-nymph does with her flaming hair and her frank eyes. No wonder the old gods loved mortal women, if they knew my royal joy with this child of earth. Into the church, man, and leave me to my wooing!”
Hildebrand responded to the release of Robert’s arm, and the impatient gesture of dismissal that followed, by a reverential salutation, which Robert suddenly interrupted.
“I had forgotten,” he said. “Did you do as I bade you, and bring a hunter’s cloak with you?”
Hildebrand bowed. “I hid it behind yonder fallen pillar,” he said, and, going to the spot, he returned to the King bearing a large, green cloak, which the King threw over his shoulders and gathered about his arms so as to muffle his royal bravery.
“I woo as the hunter, not as the King,” he said.
Hildebrand bowed again. Then, turning, he climbed the hill that led to the church. Robert’s eyes followed him till the doors of the church had closed upon his minister. Then with swift, noiseless steps he sped in the opposite direction, and, pausing before the dwelling of Perpetua, knocked lightly at the door and listened eagerly for answer. He could hear a sound as of an inner door being opened, of light footsteps crossing an intervening space; then his answer came in the voice of Perpetua.
“Who is there?” Perpetua called through the door. She was wondering at this sudden fulfilment of her father’s fears, but she felt no fear herself. Instantly a voice outside whispered her name: