Diane of the Green Van

"If I know you at all," said Mic-co with a quiet smile, "there will be no pattern, save of your own making."

"I come of a family who rebel at patterns," said Carl. "My mother--my uncle--my cousin. Let me tell you all," and he told of the night in the Sherrill garden; of the brutal desire that had later come with the brooding and the wild disorders of his brain, to drive him deeper and deeper into the black abyss until he fought and won by the camp fire; of his consequent panic-stricken rebound of horror and remorse when he had put it all aside, fighting the call with reason, seeking desperately to crush it out of his life, until the sight of Keela in the satin gown had sent him back with a shock to that finer, cleaner, quieter call that had come in the Sherrill garden. Then the disordered interval between had fled to the limbo of forgotten things.

Mic-co heard his story to the end without comment. He was silent so long that Carl grew uncomfortable.

"Since Keela was a little, wistful, black-eyed child," said Mic-co at last, "I have been her teacher. We have worked very hard together. Peace came to me through her." He broke off frowning and spoke of the alarming mine of inherited instincts from the white father which his teaching had awakened. Keela had been restless and unhappy, fastidiously aloof with the Seminoles, shy and reticent with white men. He must not make another mistake, he said, for Keela was very dear to him.

"The white father?" asked Carl curiously.

"An artist."

"She has a marvelous gift in modeling," said Carl. "I know a famous young sculptor whose work is nothing like so virile. Might not something utterly new and barbaric come of it with proper direction? If she could interpret this wild life of the Glades from an Indian viewpoint--"

"I have frequently thought of it," agreed Mic-co. "You would help her, Carl?"

"Yes."

"It would give a definite and unselfish direction to your own life, would it not, like those weeks at the farm with Wherry?"

"Yes. You trust me, Mic-co?"

"Utterly."

Carl held out his hand.

"One by one," said Mic-co, "fate is slipping into the groove of your life people who are destined to care greatly--"

"You mean--"

"It shall be Keela's to decide."

"Mic-co, I--cannot thank you. You and Philip--"

But he could not go on.

A little later he went to bed and lay restless until morning. He was up again at sunrise, tramping over the island paths with Mic-co.

The quiet of the early morning was rife with the chirp of countless birds, with the crackle of the camp fire where the turbaned Indians in Mic-co's service were preparing the morning meal. There was young corn on the fertile island to the east. Over the chain of islands lay the promise of early summer.