Suddenly he wheeled with blazing eyes of agony.

“Why must that old horrible remorse grind and tear!” he cried, “now when I can not bear it!  It is keener and crueler now than it was that day when you found me in the forest.  Every new twist of this damnable mess has been a barb tearing the old wound open afresh.  And now—­I—­I can not even find Miss Westfall.  I have motored over the roads in vain.  The van is gone from the lake shore.  It seemed that I must make one final desperate effort to make her understand—­”

With the memory of the eyes of Diane and Philip flashing messages of utter trust that day beneath the trees, the Baron sighed.

“Ronador,” he said kindly, “it would have been in vain.”

“And now,” Ronador moistened his pallid lips, “there is a rumble of war from Galituria.”

“Yes,” said Tregar sadly, “Themar was a traitor.”

“I told him much,” said Ronador, great drops of moisture standing forth upon his forehead.  “It seemed that I must, to make him understand the urgent need of silencing Granberry forever.  He cabled the news to Galituria and sold it.  I am ill and discouraged.  There is fever in my blood, Tregar, from this climate of eternal summer—­a fever in my head—­”

Tregar stroked his beard.

“There is a doctor,” he said quietly, “of whom Poynter has told me much—­a doctor who healed Granberry’s mind as well as his body.  I had thought to go to him myself—­to rest.  I, too, am tired, Ronador.  One goes to a little hamlet and an old man guides by a road to the south into the Everglades.  Let us go there together.”

“No!” said Ronador sullenly.  “Let us rather go home.  I am sick of this land of insolent men like Granberry and Poynter, who bend the knee to no man.”

“You would go back then, ill, sullen, resentful, with the news that we must lay before your father?  By Heaven, no!” thundered the Baron with one of his infrequent outbursts.  “Let us go back smiling, for all we have lost, and seek to tell of this child of Theodomir with what grace we can muster.  Poynter is at the bedside of his father.  Granberry has gone to learn the tale of the other candlestick.  These men, Ronador, we must see again before we sail.  In the meantime, there is Poynter’s physician.”

“Very well,” said Ronador, goaded to a sudden consent by a fevered wave of nausea and shaking, “let us go to him.”

So came Prince Ronador and the Baron to the island lodge of Mic-co.

Though Ronador in the first disorder of rebellious mind and body, had fancied himself sicker than he really was, he was suffering more now than even Tregar guessed.  The last stage of the journey to a man of less indomitable grit and courage would have been impossible.  It was no sickness of the mind alone.  His body was wildly ravaged by a fever.

Through a dizzy blur which distorted every object and which frowningly he sought to drive away with clenched hands, he stared at the lodge, stared at Keela, stared at the grave and quiet face of Mic-co.  He was still staring vaguely about him when night curtained the lilied pool and the stars flashed brightly overhead.