ds parted the curtain of green leaves, and through the gap came
sunlight--sunlight and the hunter with eyes like mountain lakes; and as
I moved to meet him the vision vanished. Are you a wizard?"

Robert could now command himself.

"No," he said; "only a fool who teases his soul with Elysian fancies.
But the strings of the lute have snapped; they were made of
heartstrings, and a thought too fine for the work. I will play that air
no more."

She did not seem to notice the sorrow in his voice; she longed for
solitude. "Leave me a little while to myself," she entreated. "I want to
be alone and pray."

Robert looked at her wistfully; for a few golden moments he had known
youth again, and hope, and the speech of passionate love, had seen the
woman he worshipped come to him under the spell of his words. Now he was
again God's outcast.

"The will of Heaven be done," he murmured to himself; then to Perpetua
he said, quietly, "When you pray, pray for your poor servant, for I
think your pure voice must soar at once into the courts of Heaven."

Perpetua smiled kindly at him. "Dear Diogenes," she said; and with that
name ringing in his ears Robert went slowly out through the sea-door.
Perpetua turned and knelt at the altar, praying,

"Dear Mother of Mercy, help me to forget the hunter's face!"

XVI

THE CALL OF THE BELL

Out of the darkest shadows a woman crept towards the altar. She bent
over Perpetua where she knelt, and said, mockingly:

"You would do better to pray to forget the fool's face, for the fool has
led you into folly."

Perpetua sprang to her feet and saw Lycabetta. Making the sign of the
cross she confronted her. "Why are you here? This place is holy."

Lycabetta laughed. "I loved you so well that I could not part from you.
You have no plague mark on your beauty. That was a rare trick, and your
fool hid you cunningly--but we have found you, bird, at last."

"I am in sanctuary," Perpetua said, steadily.

Lycabetta sneered, "Our king-hawk will not be scared by a sacred name."

"Sicily still stands in Christendom," Perpetua answered; "and this
ground is as holy as the old Jerusalem or the new."

Lycabetta looked at her with languid wonder.

"Why are you so perverse? It is a smiling fortune to be the darling of a
king."

"It is a fairer fortune to be the darling of the Lord," Perpetua
answered, proudly. "Why do you plague me so vainly? There is no fear nor
favor in the world that can move