The jester’s face was shadowed by a sad tenderness.  “May you never wish yourself back in your cage, my child,” he said.  “But it grows late, and I think that you have told this guest all that you can of your father’s work.”

“All that I know,” the young girl said, regretfully.  “I really know so little of it—­and the books were lost.”

In a maze Alan followed the jester down the darkening stairway.  At the foot Stefano turned and faced him.  “You see what she is,” he said.  “She is Archiater’s only child—­she has his signet ring and his letters written her from prison—­only two, but I risked my own life to get them for her.  When they took him away they did not know that such a little creature existed.  She was but seven years old, and her nurse, Maddalena, hid with her in a chest in the garret, telling her that it was a game.  That night I took them to a place of safety.”

“And you have taken care of her ever since?” the young man asked.  The jester nodded his big head.  Then, as a group of courtiers came around the corner, with a mocking gesture, Stefano limped away.  Alan heard their shout of laughter at his words of greeting, and went home in a dream.

During the following days Stefano treated him with every appearance of confidence.  By the jester’s invitation he spent many hours at the tall ancient house, in that enchanted room with its latticed windows looking out over street and wall to the mountains.  Stefano spent the time lounging on the divan or in the great chair, or watching the street far below.  He said very little and often seemed scarcely to hear the talk of the youth and the maiden.

Their talk ranged over many subjects.  The girl could read not only in Latin, the common language of all scholars, but in Greek and Arabian.  Many of her books were heavy leatherbound tomes by Avicenna, Averroes, Damascene, Pliny, and other writers whose very names were unfamiliar to Alan’s ears.  She poised above them like a bee over a garden, gathering what pleased her bright fancy.  Sometimes while they talked she would be working upon her tapestry, some rich, delicate or curious design in her many-hued silks.

Alan found that her father had begun teaching her the laws of design and color before she could read.  He had told her that colors were like notes in music, and had their loves and hates as people do.

“Is it not so in your work, Al-an?” she asked.  “Do not the good colors and the bad contend always until you bring them into agreement?”

Alan had told her of his work, and it seemed to interest her immensely.  She was greatly delighted when she learned that he had found memoranda in her father’s own handwriting, which had led to the making of wonderful deep blue glass.

“If I had the little books he wrote for me,” she said one day, “you might find something beautiful in them also.”

He watched and wondered at the sure instinct guiding her deft, small fingers in the placing of colors—­the purple fruit, the gold-green vine or the scarlet pomegranate flower in her maze-like embroidery.  “But how can you make pictures in the windows,” she would say, with her lilting laughter, “if you do not know about color?”