irresistibly in his mind was too vague and formless for utterance.

"I beg your pardon," he stammered. "But I fancied you were merely
camping around among the hills for the summer."

The girl rose and moved off toward the van looming ghostlike through
the trees.

"Good night--_Philip_!" she called lightly, her voice instinct with
delicate irony.

Philip stirred. His voice was very gentle.

"Thank you!" he said simply.

Diane hastily climbed the steps at the rear of the van and disappeared.

"I hate men," thought Diane with burning cheeks as she seated herself
upon the cot by the window and loosened the shining mass of her
straight black hair, "who ramble flippantly through a conversation and
turn suddenly serious when one least expects it."

By the fire, burning lower as the moon climbed higher, Philip lay very
quiet. Somehow the moonlit stillness of the forest had altered
indefinably. Its depth and shadows jarred. Fair as it was, it had
harbored things sinister and evil. And who might say--there was peace
of course in the moon-silver rug of pine among the trees, in the
gossamer cobweb there among the bushes jeweled lightly in dew, in the
faint, sweet chirp of a drowsy bird above his head--but the moon-ray
which lingered in the heart of the wild geranium would presently