his heavy, weary head and stared at her,
dazed, while she looked sadly at the twisted visage of the fool. Then
consciousness came back to Robert, and he knew Perpetua, and his heart
rejoiced within him.

"You! you!" he cried, hopefully. "Do you not know me?"

Perpetua looked pitifully at the ill-favored face. Who that had once
seen it could fail to remember it, she thought; so she answered, gently,

"Indeed I do."

Robert rose stiffly to his feet and held out his hands to her eagerly.
In the moonlight his face seemed to her more hideous than even she had
thought it in the morning, and she drew away from him involuntarily, but
he paid no heed to this, thinking only of her words.

"Ah, Heaven be praised!" he sighed. "You know I am the King."

Instantly Perpetua remembered the fool's tale of the morning--how he had
played at being the King and was menaced with death for his mimicry. She
felt sure that the moon had overthrown his weak wits, and that he had
now come to believe, in his madness, that he was, indeed, the King. But
Robert plied her eagerly.

"You remember," he insisted, "a while ago, in the sunlight, how I told
you who I was? I am the King."

He drew himself up proudly, and his air of dignity contrasted so grimly
with his wry figure that Perpetua, who had found no tears for her own
grief, was ready to weep for him. So she answered him according to his
folly, hoping to soothe him.

"Yes, yes, I remember," she murmured, touched to the heart by the
trouble in his wild eyes. "But you seem sick and faint. Shall I bring
you some water?"

She made as if to leave him, to seek for water, but he stayed her with a
gesture, speaking rapidly, in a low voice that seemed charged with fear.

"There is a strange conspiracy against me"--he paused, as if trying to
command his fevered thoughts, and pressed his hands to his forehead--"or
else I have been dreaming a strange dream." He looked around him
drearily, and then again fixed his questioning gaze upon her. "But
you--you know me?"

"Yes, yes, I know you," Perpetua answered him, gently; but to herself
she said, "Poor soul! poor soul!" and she wondered what she could do to
help the afflicted thing. If her father had returned he would know what
to do--or one of the holy brothers of the Church. Even while she
reflected two forms rose against the sky, coming from the pathway, giant
figures with skins like burnished copper, clad with a barbaric splendor,
with pelts of