Diane of the Green Van

Carl laughed and shuddered, for a mad instant he held the tempting yellow paper above the fire--and drew it back, stared at the charred candlestick and laughed again--but there was nothing of laughter in his eyes. They were darkly ironic and triumphant. There was blood in the fire--and gold--and Diane had mocked his mother. With a groan Carl flung his arms out passionately upon the table, torn by a conflict of the strangely warring forces within him. And with his head drooping heavily forward upon his hands he lay there until the melancholy dawn grayed the room into shadowy distinctness, his angle of vision twisted and maimed by the demon of the bottle. The candlestick loomed strangely forth from the still grayness; the bottle took form; the yellowed paper glimmered on the table. Carl stirred and a spasm of mirthless laughter shook him.

"So," he said, "Philip Poynter loses--and I--I write to Houdania!"

So from the bottle rose a phantom of glittering gold and temptation to grow in time to a wraith of gigantic proportions. In the bottle to-night had lain tears and jest and love unending, romance and passion, treachery and irony--blood and the shadow of Death.