Diane of the Green Van

Mic-co bent and raised the groveling figure.

"Peace!" he said, his face very white. "We will heal and quiet the Voice forever. Come!" Gently he led the sick man away.

"He will sleep now, I think," he said a little later. "A drug is best when a Voice is mocking?--"

The Baron leaned forward and caught Mic-co's arm in a grasp of iron.

"Who are you," he whispered, "that you suffer with him now? You are white and shaking. Who are you that you know the tongue of my country?"

Mic-co sighed.

"I," said he sadly, "am that man he thought to kill!"

White-faced, the Baron stared at the snowy beard and hair and the fine, dark eyes.

"Theodomir!" he whispered brokenly. "Theodomir! It--it can not be."

He fell to pacing the floor in violent agitation.

"The eyes are quieter," he said at length with an effort, "but the hair and heard so white! I would not have guessed--I would not have guessed!" Again he stared.

"Are you man or saint," he cried at last, "that you can forgive as I have seen your eyes forgive to-night?"

"May a man look upon such remorse as that," asked Mic-co, "and not forgive? I loved him greatly. Had I loved him less--had I loved her less--that Indian wife who had no love in her heart for me, this hair of mine would not have turned snow-white when the Indians were fanning the flickering spark of life into a blaze again."

"There is peace in your face," said Tregar a little bitterly, "and none of the old fretful discontent. Have you no single thought of regret for that fair land of ours you left?"

"For that fatherland of rugged mountain and silver waterfall--yes!" cried Theodomir with sudden fire. "For the festering core of imperialism that darkens its beauty with sable wing--no! No single thought of regret. How pitiful and absurd our Lilliputian game of empire! What man is better than another? Tolstoi and Buddha, they are the men who knew. Was not my wildest error," he demanded reverting afresh to the other's reproach, "that homesick letter that brought him to my side? Peace came to me, Tregar, in building this lodge, in working in the field and hunting, in doctoring these primitive people who saved my life, in teaching the child of my Indian wife--"

"The child of your wife! You mean your daughter?"

"I have no child," said Theodomir. "The girl you saw to-night is my foster daughter, the child of my wife and the man for whose whim she begged me to divorce her."

"No child!" exclaimed the Baron with a sickening flash of realization. "My poor Ronador!"