He was not skulking, and indeed he seemed to have a splendid indifference to discovery.  He was staring at Becky and in his hand, a blaze of lovely color against his coat, was Becky’s fan!

Randy took a step forward.  George turned and saw him.

“I was looking for that,” Randy said, and held out his hand for the fan.

But Dalton did not give it to him.  “She knows I have it.”

“How could she know?” Randy demanded; “she dropped it from the balcony.”

“And I was under the balcony”—­George’s laugh was tantalizing,—­“a patient Romeo.”

“You picked it up.”

“I picked it up.  And she knew that I did.  Didn’t she tell you?”

She had not told him.  He remembered now her unwillingness to have him search for it.

He had no answer for George.  But again he held out his hand.

“She will be glad to get it.  Will you give it to me?”

“She told me I might—­keep it.”

“Keep it——?”

“For remembrance.”

There was a tense pause.  “If that is true,” said Randy, “there is, of course, nothing else for me to say.”

He turned to go, but George stopped him.  “Wait a minute.  You are going to marry her?”

“Yes.”

“And she is very—­rich.”

“Her money does not enter into the matter.”

“Some people might think it did.  There are those who might be unkind enough to call you a—­fortune-hunter.”

“I shall be called nothing of the kind by those who know me.”

“But there are so many who don’t know you.”

“I wonder,” said Randy, fiercely, “why I am staying here and letting you say such things to me.  There is nothing you can say which can hurt me.  Becky knows—­God knows, that I wish she were as poor as poverty.  Perhaps money doesn’t mean as much to us as it does to you.  I wish I had it, yes—­so that I could give it to her.  But love for us means a tent in the desert—­a hut on a mountain—­it can never mean what we could buy with money.”

“Does love mean to her,” George’s tone was incisive, “a tent in the desert, a hut on a mountain?”

Randy’s anger flamed.  “I think,” he said, “that I should beg Becky’s pardon for bringing her name into this at all——­ And now, will you give me her fan?”

“When she asks for it—­yes.”

Randy was breathing heavily.  “Will you give me her—­fan——­”

The mist from the fountain blew cool against his hot cheeks.  The water which old Neptune poured from his shell flashed white under the stars.

“Let her ask for it——­” George’s laugh was light.

It was that laugh which made Randy see red.  He caught George’s wrists suddenly in his hands.  “Drop it.”

George stopped laughing.  “Let her ask for it,” he said again.

Randy twisted the wrists.  It was a cruel trick.  But his Indian blood was uppermost.

“Drop it,” he said, with another twist, and the fan fell.