d brightly overhead.

"I am not ill, Tregar!" he insisted curtly. "Let me rest by the pool.
There is peace here and I am tired. We traveled rapidly--"

Nevertheless, for all his feverish denial, his desperate attempts to
keep to the thread of desultory talk were pitiful. He frowned heavily,
began his sentences slowly and trailed off incoherently to a halt and
silence.

The Baron turned compassionately away from him to Mic-co with a
question.

"Names," said Mic-co, "are nothing to me, Baron Tregar. They are
merely a part of that great world from which I live apart. I am a
Heidelberg man, since you feel sufficiently interested to inquire.
Though my choice of a profession was merely a careless desire to know
some one thing well, I have never regretted it."

"I--I beg your pardon," stammered the Baron and glanced keenly at
Mic-co.

"It is a habit of mine," hinted Mic-co, "to take what confidence a man
may offer and let him withhold what he will."

"There is nothing to withhold!" flashed Ronador with sudden fierceness.
"Why do you speak of it?"

Mic-co thought of a white-faced young fellow who had stubbornly refused
to accept his hospitality, one morning beneath the live oaks, until he
might name aloud his offenses in the sight of God and Man. This man
before him, sweeping rapidly into the black gulf of delirium, was of a
different caliber.

By the pool Ronador leaped suddenly, his face quite colorless save
where the flame of fever burned in his cheeks.

"That Voice!" he said, standing in curious attitude of listening. "You
hear it, Tregar? Always--always it comes so in the quietest hours.
Tell him! Tell him! Why should I tell him? What is he to me? I may
not purchase relief at the price of any man's respect. Only Tregar
knows. Hush!--In God's name, hush! Thou shalt not kill! Thou shalt
not kill!" He seemed, without conscious effort, to be repeating the
words of this Voice with which he held this terrible communion, and
waved Tregar back with an imperious gesture of defiance. Facing Mic-co
he flung out his arm.

"I am a murderer in the sight of God and Man!" he choked. "I murdered
my cousin Theodomir for a dream of empire. I can not forget--Oh, God!
I can not forget. The Voice bids me tell!"

He dropped wildly to his knees, his eyes imploring.

"Oh, God!" he prayed with pallid lips, "hear this, my prayer. I have
paid in black hours of bitter suffering. I have played and lost and
the f