Trembling violently she turned to Philip.
"Philip!" she cried. "What is it?" As her eyes met his, her hand went to her heart and the color swept in brilliant tide from the slim brown throat to the questioning eyes. "Oh, Philip! Philip!" She choked and fell again to trembling. It was a cry of remorse and heart-broken apology for the memory of a moon above the marsh.
For somehow in that instant, by a freak of instinct, the rain and the wind of Okeechobee and the bird in the pines came into their own. Their subtle messages dovetailed with the hurt look in Philip's eyes—with the conviction of the girl's sore heart, unconquerable for all she had desperately fought it—with the revelation of treachery which lay now at the bottom of the lake.
Philip was very white.
"But," he said gently, "you could not know."
"I could have waited and trusted," cried the girl. "I could have remembered Arcadia!"
Was Ronador forgotten? Tregar thought so. These two mutely avowing with blazing eyes their utter trust and loyalty had for the moment forgotten everything but each other.
Ronador stalked viciously away to the lake, restlessly turned on his heel with a curse and came slowly back. There was despair in his eyes. Tregar thought of the black moments of impulse and the tearing conscience and pitied him profoundly.
"Excellency," reminded Diane, "there is an explanation—"
But Ronador's pallid lips were set in lines of fierce denial.