With a groan Carl
flung his arms out passionately upon the table, torn by a conflict of
the strangely warring forces within him. And with his head drooping
heavily forward upon his hands he lay there until the melancholy dawn
grayed the room into shadowy distinctness, his angle of vision twisted
and maimed by the demon of the bottle. The candlestick loomed
strangely forth from the still grayness; the bottle took form; the
yellowed paper glimmered on the table. Carl stirred and a spasm of
mirthless laughter shook him.
"So," he said, "Philip Poynter loses--and I--I write to Houdania!"
So from the bottle rose a phantom of glittering gold and temptation to
grow in time to a wraith of gigantic proportions. In the bottle
to-night had lain tears and jest and love unending, romance and
passion, treachery and irony--blood and the shadow of Death.
CHAPTER VI
BARON TREGAR
Lilac and wistaria flowered royally. Carpenter, wheelwright and painter
departed. The trim green wagon, picked out gayly in white, windowed and
curtained and splendidly equipped for the fortunes of the road, creaked
briskly away upon its pilgrimage, behind a pair of big-boned piebald
horses from the Westfall stables, with Johnny at the reins. On the seat
beside him Diane radiantly waved adieu to her aunt, who promptly
collapsed in a chair on the porch and dabbed violently at her eyes.
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