ling, she came to meet him.

Now as Ronador smiled down into the clear, unfaltering eyes of the girl
before him, he knew suddenly that he trusted her utterly, that the mad
suspicion, sired by the words of Themar and mothered by jealousy, was
but a dank mist that melted away in the sunlight of her presence. Only
jealousy remained and a smouldering, unscrupulous hate for the
persistent young organ-grinder behind him.

Chatting pleasantly they returned to camp.

Imperceptibly their talk of the fortunes of the road took on a more
intimate tinge of reminiscence and presently, with searching eyes fixed
upon the vivid, lovely face of the wind-brown gypsy beneath the cedar,
Ronador asked the girl to marry him.

Very gently Diane released her hands from his grasp, her cheeks scarlet.

"Indeed, indeed," she faltered, "I could not with fairness answer you
now, for I do not in the least know what I think. You will not
misunderstand me, I am sure, if I tell you that not once in the long,
pleasant days we journeyed the same roads, did I ever dream of the
nature of your pleasant friendship." Her frank, dark eyes, alive with
a beautiful sincerity, met his honestly. "There was always
tradition--" she reminded.

Ronador's reply was sincere and gallant. Diane was lovelier than any
princess, he said, and in Houdania, tradition had been replaced years
back by a law which granted freedom.

"Though to be sure," he added bitterly, "each generation seeks to break
it. Tregar tried, urging me persistently for diplomatic reasons to
take a wife of his choosing. And when I--I fled to America to escape
his infernal scheming and spying--he followed. Even here in America I
have been haunted by spies--"

His glance wavered.

"And then," he went on earnestly, "I saw you and I knew that Princess
Phaedra was forever impossible. There was a night of terrible wind and
storm when I planned to beg shelter in your camp and make your
acquaintance. . . . You are annoyed?"

"No," said Diane honestly. "Why fuss now?"

"Tregar must have suspected. I met his--his spy in the forest and we
quarreled wildly. He tried to kill me but the bullet went wild."

Again his glance wavered but the lying words came smoothly. "My
servant, Themar, leaped and stabbed him in the shoulder--"

"No! No!" cried Diane. "Not that--not that!" Her eyes, dark with
horror in the colorless oval of her face, met Ronador's with mute
appeal. "It--it can not be," sh