dead. Wait, wait, your patience shall not
be strained to breaking, and my adventure is good hearing. My man lay on
his back in the moonlight, staring stupidly, and I who looked saw that
his face was drawn and twisted, as if he had died in great pain; his
teeth were dropping from their livid gums and his skin was stained and
mottled and discolored, blue and black and green, and he seemed to rot
as I watched him. But I was cold and I fear nothing, being a fool, so I
went my ways, warm in his mantle. What do I care for the plague?"

The plague!

At that name the listeners shivered as if a wind of death had blown
through the heavy scented air. Hildebrand drew back in horror, gasping
the dreaded words, "The plague!" Lycabetta grew white with fear. "Oh,
gods, the plague!" she moaned, groping for support which none gave her.
Her women fluttered together paralyzed with terror, and the black slaves
recoiled from the one enemy their courage dared not face.

Robert, lifting his hands as if in a kind of hideous benediction,
gibbered at their fear.

"The very plague!" he screamed. "The plague is in the port, the plague
is on the city, the plague is at your gates! What care I if all Syracuse
dies of it! My mantle reeks with its sweat."

With a rattle of damnable laughter Robert clutched at his mantle, which
lay where he had cast it down when he entered, now near his feet.
Fluttering it in the air so that its folds seemed to quiver like the
pinions of a fiend, he flung it upon Perpetua and swathed it tightly
about her unresisting body. To her the plague was better than
self-slaughter, as self-slaughter was better than pollution. Still the
others cowered, spellbound by their dread.

"Who will woo her now?" Robert screamed, folding her in his arms. "Who
now will draw death from her lips? If she dies, she dies mine, and I
will sit hunched by her side and watch her white flesh wither."

While he shrieked he was dragging Perpetua towards the entrance, and now
he caught at the silken hangings, while his voice, swelling in volume of
malignant imprecation, yelled at his terrified enemies, "The plague! the
plague! make way there for the plague!"

There was no one to say him nay. With a scream Lycabetta fell fainting
to the floor. Hildebrand was trying to cross himself with nerveless
fingers, the women were sobbing hysterically, and the slaves had fled.

Robert and Perpetua passed unchallenged from the room and from the
house.