"Was it necessary to affect callow inexperience and such a happy-go-lucky, imbecile philosophy?" she demanded cuttingly.
"Hum!" admitted Philip humbly. "I'm a salamander."
"And you said you were waiting to be rescued!" she accused indignantly.
Philip sighed.
"Well, in a sense I was. I saw you coming through the trees--and there are times when one must talk." He met her level glance of reproach with one of frank apology. "If I see a man whose face I like, I speak to him. Surely Nature does not flash that subtle sense of magnetism for nothing. If I am to live fully, then must I infuse into my insular existence the electric spark of sympathetic friendship. Why impoverish my existence by a lost opportunity? If I had not alighted that day upon the lake and waited for you to come through the trees--" he fell suddenly quiet, knocking the ashes from his pipe upon the ground beside him.
"The moon is climbing," said Diane irrelevantly, "and Johnny is waiting to bandage your shoulder."
"Let him wait," returned Philip imperturbably. "And no matter what I do the moon will go on climbing." He lazily pointed the stem of his pipe at a firelit tree. "What glints so oddly there," he wondered, "when the fire leaps?"
"It's the bullet," replied Diane absently and bit her lip with a quick flush of annoyance.
"What bullet?" said Philip with instant interest. "It's odd I hadn't noticed it before."
"Some one shot in the forest last night while Johnny was off chasing your assailant. Likely the second man he saw cranking the car. It struck the tree. Johnny and I made a compact not to speak of it and I forgot. My aunt is fussy."
"Where were you?" demanded Philip abruptly.
"By the tree. It--it grazed my hair--"
Philip's face grew suddenly as changeless as the white moonlight in the forest.
"Accidental knives and bullets in Arcadia!" said he at length. "It jars a bit."
"I do hope," said Diane with definite disapproval, "that you're not going to fuss. I didn't. I was frightened of course, for at first I thought it had been aimed straight at me--and I was quite alone--but startling things do happen now and then, and if you can't explain them, you might as well forget them. I hope I may count on your silence. If my aunt gets wind of it, she'll conjure up a trail of accidental shots to follow me from here to Florida and every time it storms, she'll like as not hear ghost-bullets. She's like that."
"Florida!" ejaculated Philip--and stared.
"To be sure!" said Diane. "Why not? Must I alter my plans for somebody's stray bullet?"