A hot appeal flashed in Ronador's
eyes and eloquently again he fell to pleading.
But Diane had caught the clatter of the music-machine up the road where
Philip was good-humoredly unwinding the hullabaloo for a crowd of
gleeful young darkies, and suddenly she turned very white and stern.
"No! No!" she said. "It must be as I said."
And presently, with faith in his poisoned arrows Ronador went, pledged
to await her summons.
Diane sat very still beneath the cedars, with the noise of the
music-machine wild torture to her ears.
CHAPTER XXXIV
THE MOON ABOVE THE MARSH
The moon silvered the marsh and the creek. Off to the east rippled a
silent, moon-white stretch of sea, infinitely lonely, murmuring in the
star-cool night.
Restless and wakeful Diane watched the stream glide endlessly on, each
reed and pebble silvered. Rex lay on the bank beside her, whither he
had followed faithfully a very long while ago, snapping at the insects
which rose from the grass. So colorless and fixed was the face of his
mistress that it seemed a beautiful graven thing devoid of life.
Now presently as Diane stared at the moon-lit pebbles glinting at her
feet, a shadow among the cedars, having advanced and retreated
uncertainly a score of times before, suddenly detached itself from the
wavering stencil of tree and bush upon the moonlit ground and resolved
itself into the figure of a tall, determined sentinel who approached
and seated himself beside her.
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