Diane of the Green Van

"You would go back then, ill, sullen, resentful, with the news that we must lay before your father? By Heaven, no!" thundered the Baron with one of his infrequent outbursts. "Let us go back smiling, for all we have lost, and seek to tell of this child of Theodomir with what grace we can muster. Poynter is at the bedside of his father. Granberry has gone to learn the tale of the other candlestick. These men, Ronador, we must see again before we sail. In the meantime, there is Poynter's physician."

"Very well," said Ronador, goaded to a sudden consent by a fevered wave of nausea and shaking, "let us go to him."

So came Prince Ronador and the Baron to the island lodge of Mic-co.

Though Ronador in the first disorder of rebellious mind and body, had fancied himself sicker than he really was, he was suffering more now than even Tregar guessed. The last stage of the journey to a man of less indomitable grit and courage would have been impossible. It was no sickness of the mind alone. His body was wildly ravaged by a fever.

Through a dizzy blur which distorted every object and which frowningly he sought to drive away with clenched hands, he stared at the lodge, stared at Keela, stared at the grave and quiet face of Mic-co. He was still staring vaguely about him when night curtained the lilied pool and the stars flashed brightly overhead.

"I am not ill, Tregar!" he insisted curtly. "Let me rest by the pool. There is peace here and I am tired. We traveled rapidly--"

Nevertheless, for all his feverish denial, his desperate attempts to keep to the thread of desultory talk were pitiful. He frowned heavily, began his sentences slowly and trailed off incoherently to a halt and silence.

The Baron turned compassionately away from him to Mic-co with a question.

"Names," said Mic-co, "are nothing to me, Baron Tregar. They are merely a part of that great world from which I live apart. I am a Heidelberg man, since you feel sufficiently interested to inquire. Though my choice of a profession was merely a careless desire to know some one thing well, I have never regretted it."

"I--I beg your pardon," stammered the Baron and glanced keenly at Mic-co.

"It is a habit of mine," hinted Mic-co, "to take what confidence a man may offer and let him withhold what he will."

"There is nothing to withhold!" flashed Ronador with sudden fierceness. "Why do you speak of it?"

Mic-co thought of a white-faced young fellow who had stubbornly refused to accept his hospitality, one morning beneath the live oaks, until he might name aloud his offenses in the sight of God and Man. This man before him, sweeping rapidly into the black gulf of delirium, was of a different caliber.