g him back to sanity. At
least the test was worth trying. She sprang to the couch, caught up the
mirror, and, turning to Robert as he followed her, thrust, with extended
arms, the mirror before his face. Had he been struck by lightning his
advance had not stayed more surely.

"God in heaven," he cried, in a dreadful voice, that made the girl
shiver to hear. He snatched the mirror from her and stared into the
shining field, reading there the hideous lineaments of the fool
Diogenes. His wild eyes turned from the mirror to her and back again.

"What damnable trick is this? I am bewitched, for the fool's face leers
at me. Some devil reigns in Sicily, who has put this stain upon me."

The tears came into Perpetua's eyes for the blighted wretch who could
thus deny his own image. Robert saw the tears and guessed their meaning.

"Woman," he entreated. "Can you not pierce through this glamour? I am,
indeed, the King. For holy charity believe me. Though it has pleased
Heaven or Hell to change me thus, I am the King."

He held out his hands to her in piteous supplication, and for a moment
for very pity's sake there came the temptation into Perpetua's mind to
humor the poor ruin. But she thrust the temptation from her, and sadly
turned her head. Robert, with a groan, flung himself upon the couch and
sat there staring into the mirror, trying to understand the calamity
that had come upon him and blotted out his form. In the shining glass
the wrinkled, twisted face of Diogenes twitched viciously. Blind rage
overswept him, and he shook his fist at the foul reflection, screaming
madly:

"I am the King! I am the King!"

Perpetua suffered with him as she would have suffered with some wounded
forest beast; even sorrowed more, for if the forest beast were a dumb
thing and could not tell its woes, the fool could speak, and his speech
was worse than silence. Her compassionate womanhood sent her to his
side, and she touched him gently on the shoulder, trying to whisper some
words of sympathy, of pity.

But at the touch of her hand, at the sound of her voice, Robert flung
the mirror from him, and, springing to his feet, faced the girl with
evil in his eyes. Ugly thoughts crowded upon him, wicked impulses
pricked his blood. If he was thus deformed, thus degraded, thus stripped
of his youth, his beauty, and his power, at least he would not suffer
alone; at least he, the outcast, had one at his command. The girl who
had denied the King wa