Diane of the Green Van | Page 6

your life so early, contact with her broad understanding of things would have tempered your sex insularity." He glanced pityingly at Diane. "You've fire and vision, Diane," he said bluntly, "but you're intolerant. It's a Westfall trait." He laughed softly. "How scornfully you used to laugh and jeer at boys, because you were swifter of foot and keener of vision than any of them, because you could leap and run and swim like a wild thing! Intolerance again, Diane, even as a youngster!"
He rose restlessly, smiling down at her with a lazy expression of deference in his eyes.
"Wonderful, beautiful lady of fire and ebony!" he said gently, with a bewildering change of mood which brought the vivid color to Diane's dark cheek. "There's the wild, sweet wine of the forest in your very blood! And it's always calling!"
"Yes," nodded Diane wistfully, "it's always calling. How did you know?"
"By the wizardry of eye and intuition!" he laughed lightly. "And the personal consideration," he added pleasantly; "we've come at last to that."
A tide of color swept brightly over Diane's face.
"Surely, Carl," she exclaimed with a swift, level glance, "you don't mean that you care?"
"No," said Carl honestly, "I don't. I mean just this. Will you permit me to care? To-night as you stood there in the doorway I knew for the first time that, if I chose, I could love you very greatly."
"Love isn't like that," flashed Diane. "It comes unbidden."
"To different natures come different dawnings of the immortal white fire!" shrugged Carl. "My love will be largely a matter of will. I'm armored heavily."
"For a golden key!" scoffed Diane, rising.
"Ah, well," said Carl impudently, "it was well worth a try! I'm sure I could love with all the fiery appurtenances of the Devil himself if I shed the armor."

CHAPTER IV
THE VOICE OF THE OPEN COUNTRY
"Aunt Agatha!" Diane rapped lightly at her aunt's bedroom door. "Are you asleep?"
"No, no indeed!" puffed Aunt Agatha forlornly. "Certainly not. When in the world did you come back from the farm, child? I've worried so! And like you, too, to come back as unexpectedly as you went." She opened the door wider for her niece to enter. "But as for sleep, Diane, I hope I'm not as callous as that. I shan't sleep a wink to-night, I'm sure of it."
Aunt Agatha dabbed ineffectually at her round, aggrieved eyes.
"Carl's a terrible responsibility for me, Diane," she went on, "though to be sure there have been wild nights when I've put cotton in my ears and locked the door and if I'd only remembered to do that I wouldn't have heard the glass crash--one of the Florentine set, too, I haven't the ghost of a doubt. I feel those things, Diane. Mamma, too, had a gift of feeling things she didn't know for sure--mamma did!--and the servants talk--of course they do!--who wouldn't? I must say, though, Carl's always kind to me; I will say that for him but--"
The excellent lady whose mental convolutions permitted her to speculate wildly in words with the least possible investment of ideas, rambled by serpentine paths of complaint to a conversational _cul-de-sac_ and trailed off in a tragic sniff.
Diane resolutely smothered her impatience.
"I--I only ran down overnight. Aunt Agatha," she said, "to--to tell you something--"
"You can't mean it!" puffed Aunt Agatha helplessly. "What in the world are you going back to the farm for? Dear me, Diane, you're growing notional--and farms are very damp in spring."
Diane walked away to the window and stood staring thoughtfully out at the metropolitan glitter of lights beyond.
"Oh, Aunt Agatha!" she exclaimed restlessly, "you can't imagine how very tired I grow of it all--of lights and cities and restaurants and everything artificial! Surely these city days and nights of silly frivolity are only the froth of life! Have you ever longed to sleep in the woods," she added abruptly, "with stars twinkling overhead and the moonlight showering softly through the trees?"
"I'm very sure I never have!" said Aunt Agatha with considerable decision. "And it's not at all likely I ever shall. There are bugs and things," she added vaguely, "and snakes that wriggle about."
"I've always wanted to lie and dream by a camp fire," mused Diane, unconscious of a certain startled flutter of Aunt Agatha's dressing gown, "to hear the wind rising in the forest and the lap of the lake against the shore." She wheeled abruptly, her eyes bright with excitement. "And I'm going to try it."
"To sleep by a lake in springtime!" gasped Aunt Agatha in great distress. "Diane, I beg of you, _don't_ do it! I once knew a man who slept out somewhere--such a nice man, too!--and something bit him--a heron, I think, or a herring. No! It couldn't have been either. Isn't it funny how I do forget! Strangest thing! But to sleep