catacombs, where our enemies might seek in vain for a century. Come,
shall we go to Hieronymus?"

"Let us go," she said; then suddenly: "But you, you too are in danger.
The King's anger, the anger of Hildebrand--you must evade these."

A melancholy smile came over the foolish face and lent it a kind of
grace.

"Perhaps the good father may find some nook for me. I do not think his
heart will be hard, even to me, a sinner. Come."

He turned as if to lead the way, then paused and spoke to her again.

"Perpetua," he said. "Your trust in the fool"--the girl noticed that he
shuddered as he spoke, and she wondered--"your trust in the fool is not
unwisely placed. In the name of that trust, ask me, I pray you, no
questions of my past. Let us believe between us that the fool
Diogenes"--and again the convulsive shudder wrung him--"was newly born
to-day."

"I will do as you wish," she answered, full of amazement at the change
which had come to his warped wits.

He took her hand and guided her through the streets of Syracuse to the
little church by the sea. The moon shone brightly on them as they went,
the moon which swayed Syracuse, making lovers kiss, poets dream,
philosophers sigh, children sport, dogs bay. It guided them, benignly,
to their goal.

XIII

THE CHURCH BY THE SEA

The moon which had shone upon the flight of Perpetua had waxed and
waned, and her successor ruled the night in the pride of her first
quarter. Early one morning in the new month one of Lycabetta's women,
Lysidice, amber-haired, slender-limbed, with eyes like sapphires, was
wandering in the flower-market of Syracuse, seeking the loveliest blooms
for her mistress. Lycabetta loved Lysidice above her fellows, for her
slim, boyish body, for her quaint, virginal air; she had not yet tired
of the morning sport when Lysidice came from the flower-market and
pelted her with many colored blossoms. So as Lysidice, eager to please,
went hither and thither, seeking ever the best, her attention was
attracted by the sight of a man in a friar's robe, who was buying white
roses at a stall. Though friars did not often buy roses in the Syracuse
flower-market, the thing was not in itself passing strange, but the
fancy of Lysidice, arrested at first by the contrast between the friar
in his humble robe, with all that it suggested of denial, and the glory
of the brilliant blooms about him, noted that the friar kept his cowl so
close about his face as to concea