There was yellow oxalis here carpeting the ground among the low, dark cedars, yellow butterflies flitted about among the trees where Johnny was washing the van, and the inevitable buzzard floated with upturned wings above the camp.  Ronador had grown to hate the ubiquitous bird of the South.  Superstition flamed hotly up in his heart now at the sight of it.

Diane was sewing.  He had caught the flutter of her gown beneath a cedar as he stopped the car.  There was no one visible in the camp of the Indian girl.  Ronador sprang from his car and waved to the girl, smiling, 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—­”