very hard for him.

"None of these things," he said quietly, "I may tell you or anyone."

Diane leaned forward and laid her hand upon his arm.

"Philip," she whispered with dark, tragic eyes fixed upon his face,
"who--who shot the bullet that night? Do you know?"

"Yes," said Philip, "I--I am very sorry. I think I know--"

"You will not tell me?"

"No."

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.

With no final word of extenuation Philip went.

Diane stumbled hurriedly through the trees to Keela's camp and touched
the Indian girl frantically upon the shoulder.

"Keela," she cried desperately, "wake! wake! It's sunrise. Let us go
somewhere--anywhere--and leave this treacherous world of civilization
behind us. I--I am tired of it all."

Keela stared.

"Very well," she said sedately a little later. "You and I, Diane, we
will journey to my home in the Glades. There--as it was a century
back--so it is now."

CHAPTER XXXV

THE WIND OF THE OKEECHOBEE

Southward along the beautiful Kissimmee river, where