As, body shambling, mind rambling, he drifted thus about the room, the curtains behind the statue of Venus parted, and Perpetua appeared in the opening, standing between the two Moorish slaves. Then the curtains fell, the slaves disappeared, and Perpetua was left alone with the seeming fool. She recognized him at once, and the fire of hope flickered higher in her heart as she came down the steps and ran eagerly to meet him. He was but a withered fool, but still he was a man and might have pity, might have generosity, might have courage.
"Help me," she cried, holding out her hands to him. To her surprise the thing she took to be the fool Diogenes advanced as eagerly to her.
"You are free, Perpetua," he cried. "Free, if you will be my queen."
Perpetua recoiled. "Your queen?" she gasped, but Robert gave her no chance of further speech, for he went on hotly, whipping his blood with the recital of his wrongs.
"Traitors have taken my throne, traitors have stolen my crown; traitors bar the gates of my palace in my face and laugh at me through the bars; there is a false king in Syracuse, but he shall not usurp unchallenged."
Perpetua's heart grew cold. "Heaven help me," she thought in her despair, as she watched the wild gestures and listened to the wild words of her companion. "He is crazed beyond all cure."
Robert, in the midst of his vehemence, saw the sorrow in her face, saw that she moved away as he advanced to her.
"Why do you shrink from me?" he asked. "I mean you no ill. You shall be queen; I swear you shall be queen. Come with me," and he held out his hand with an air of royal condescension which contrasted ridiculously enough with his grotesque outside. Perpetua turned away from him with a little moan. "Alas, poor wretch," she sighed, her pity for his plight for the moment overpowering her sense of her own peril. Robert did not catch her words, but he saw her trouble and wondered at it.
"What do you fear?" he questioned, tenderly. "I am the King."
Perpetua clasped her hands together in an agony of compassion for the unhappy fool, and for herself, more helpless and alone through his coming.
"Dear Heaven," she prayed, "help me to mend this madness."
"Do you still shun me?" Robert asked, angrily, fretted by the girl's resistance. "Am I young, smooth, strong, comely to so little purpose? Is it a light thing to be a king like me?"