Diane drew back with a shudder.
"I know the answers to all my questions!" she said in a low voice, and there was a great horror in her eyes. "Oh, Philip, Philip, go! If—if you could have told me something different—"
"Is it useless to ask you to trust me, Diane?"
"Go!" said Diane, trembling.
By the swamp the gray ghosts fell to dancing with locked, transparent hands.
Blood-red the sun glimmered through the pines and struck fire from a gray, cold world.
Philip bent and caught her hands, quietly masterful.
"What you may think, Diane," he said unsteadily, "I do not know. But part of the answer to every question is my love for you. No—you must listen! We have crossed swords and held a merry war, but through it all ran the strong thread of friendship. We must not break it now. Do you know what I thought that day on the lake when I saw you coming through the trees? I said, I have found her! God willing, here is the perfect mate with whom I must go through life, hand in hand, if I am to live fully and die at the last having drained the cup of life to the bottom. If, knowing this, you can not trust me and will tell me so—"
But Ronador's eloquent voice rang again in the girl's ears. Her glance met Philip's inexorably. And there was something in her eyes that hurt him cruelly. For an instant his face flamed scarlet, then it grew white and hard and very grim.
"Go!" said Diane and buried her face in her hands.