Perpetua lifted her bright eyes, and he read in them the joy of a white soul escaping shame. On his ears her words came like saintly music. "I do but commend my spirit to its Maker. When it is done, of your clemency say a prayer by me. Farewell!"
She raised the weapon in the air, and Robert's troubled soul assured him that she meant to strike, that she meant to die. Awful influences seemed to struggle around him, darkness striving with light. He caught at the light. Voices were calling in his ears, urging evil, urging good. He caught at the good.
"Stop!" he called. "I think your hand has driven a devil from my heart. You are a saint; you have a soldier's courage; you have conquered me. I am your servant."
Perpetua hid the knife in her bosom and came close to Robert. "Will you truly help me? Let me see your eyes. Yes, I believe you. How may we escape?"
Robert drew his withered body proudly up. "I will command them to set you free."
"Alas! poor soul, they will not obey you," Perpetua said, sadly.
Robert fell from his high estate in a second. "Oh, God, I had forgotten," he groaned. He clasped his hands; his lips murmured a prayer for strength to bear his cross, for strength to serve this woman. For the second time in his sinful life he was thinking of another than himself, and that other was Perpetua. He turned to her with what he meant to be a smile. "Then we are weak things, you and I, a fool and a woman, and we must fight force with craft. Do you trust me?"
Robert came close to her and whispered in her ear. "Seem to consent to this cruel jest of theirs. I will say I have cast a spell upon you, and that you can refuse me nothing. When I command you to follow me, say that you obey. Once you are outside these gates, you will be safe. Do you understand?"
Perpetua looked at him with shining eyes. "I understand that I have found a friend."
The words seemed to burn Robert's heart with purifying fire. "A slave who will serve you faithfully," he whispered. "Hush, some one is coming."
The hangings behind the image of Venus parted, and Lycabetta surveyed the strange pair. She had grown weary of the garden, grown curious to know how the fool had progressed with his wooing.
"Well," she asked, "are the lovers happy?"