“Yes.”

“You are strong—­and sure?”

“Yes.  Quite.  I’ve promised Mic-co not to lose my grip again.”

“And sometime you will come here again?”

“Often!”

A little later she went quietly away to the Room of Books with Mic-co.

When the evening star flashed silver in the lilied pool, Carl sat alone.  Mic-co had been summoned away by an Indian servant.  A soft light gleamed in the corner of the court in a shower of vines.  Its light was a little like the soft rays of the Venetian lamp that had shone in the Sherrill garden, but Carl ruthlessly put the memory aside.  It had grown once into a devouring flame of evil portent.  It must not do so again.

His thoughts were so far away that a soft footfall behind him and the rustle of satin seemed part of that other night until turning restlessly, he caught the sheen of satin, brightly gold in the lantern-glow.  The dark, vivid skin, the hair and eyes that were somehow more Spanish than Indian—­the golden mask—­Carl’s face went wildly scarlet.

“Keela!” he cried, springing toward her, “Keela!”

There was much of his old intolerance, much of his impudent immunity to the world’s opinion in the curious flash of adjustment which leveled barriers of caste and convention and bridged, for him, in the fashion of a willful uncle, the gulf of race and breeding.

The golden mask dropped.

“Is it not a pretty farewell?” she faltered, with a wistful glance at the shimmering gown.  “Diane gave it all.  As you saw me first, so—­now!”

Some lines of Lanier’s poem of the morning were ringing wildly in
Carl’s ears.

    “The blades of the marsh grass stir;
  Passeth a hurrying sound of wings that westward whir;
  Passeth, and all is still; and the currents cease to run;
    And the sea and the marsh are one.”

“Why do you look at me so?” asked Keela.

“I have been a fool,” said Carl steadily, “a very great fool—­and blind.”

Keela’s lovely, sensitive mouth quivered.

“Is it—­” she raised glistening, glorified eyes to his troubled face, “is it,” she whispered naively, “that you care like the lovers in Mic-co’s books?”

“Yes.  And you, Keela?”

“I—­I have always cared,” she said shyly, “since that night at Sherrill’s.  I—­I feared you knew.”

Trembling violently the girl dropped to her knees with a soft crash of satin and buried her face in her hands.  She was crying wildly.

Carl gently raised her to her feet again and squarely met her eyes.

“Red-winged Blackbird,” he said quietly, “there is much that I must tell you before I may honorably face this love of yours and mine—­”

Keela’s black eyes blazed in sudden loyalty.

“There is nothing I do not know,” she flung back proudly.  “Philip told me.  And for every wild error you made, he gave a reason.  He loves and trusts you utterly.  May I not do that too?”