His mind veered back across the years, full of struggle, of triumph, of emptiness, of fulfillment, to a night in another world; a world of dreams, magic associations, high and peaceful ambitions, into which had broken a voice and an appeal from the darkness. He had turned the light upon himself then that she might see him for what he was and have no fear. So he held it now, lifting it above his forehead. Hypnotized by the compulsion of memory, she said, as she had said to the unknown helper in the desert shack:

"I don't know you. Do I?"

"Io!"

"Ah! I didn't mean to say that. It came back to me, Ban. Perhaps it's true. _Do_ I know you?"

As in the long ago he answered her: "Are you afraid of me?"

"Of everything. Of the future. Of what I don't know in you."

"There's nothing of me that you don't know," he averred.

"Isn't there?" She was infinitely wistful; avid of reassurance. Before he could answer she continued: "That night in the rain when I first saw you, under the flash, as I see you now--Ban, dear, how little you've changed, how wonderfully little, to the eye!--the instant I saw you, I trusted you."

"Do you trust me now?" he asked for the delight of hearing her declare it.

Instead he heard, incredulously, the doubt in her tone. "Do I? I want to--so much! I did then. At first sight."

He set down the lamp. She could hear him breathing quick and stressfully. He did not speak.

"At first sight," she repeated. "And--I think--I loved you from that minute. Though of course I didn't know. Not for days. Then, when I'd gone, I found what I'd never dreamed of; how much I could love."

"And now?" he whispered.

"Ah, more than then!" The low cry leapt from her lips. "A thousand times more."

"But you don't trust me?"

"Why don't I, Ban?" she pleaded. "What have you done? How have you changed?"

He shook his head. "Yet you've given me your love. Do you trust yourself?"

"Yes," she answered with a startling quietude of certainty. "In that I do. Absolutely."

"Then I'll chance the rest. You're upset to-night, aren't you, Io?

You've let your imagination run away with you."

"This isn't a new thing to me. It began--I don't know when it began.

Yes; I do. Before I ever knew or thought of you. Oh, long before! When I was no more than a baby."

"Rede me your riddle, love," he said lightly.

"It's so silly. You mustn't laugh; no, you wouldn't laugh. But you mustn't be angry with me for being a fool. Childhood impressions are terribly lasting things, Ban.... Yes, I'm going to tell you. It was a nurse I had when I was only four, I think; such a pretty, dainty Irish creature, the pink-and-black type. She used to cry over me and say--I don't suppose she thought I would ever understand or remember--'Beware the brown-eyed boys, darlin'. False an' foul they are, the brown ones.

They take a girl's poor heart an' witch it away an' twitch it away, an'

toss it back all crushed an' spoilt.' Then she would hug me and sob. She left soon after; but the warning has haunted me like a superstition....

Could you kiss it away, Ban? Tell me I'm a little fool!"

Approaching footsteps broke in upon them. The square bulk of Jim Maitland appeared in the doorway.

"What ho! you two. Ban, you're scampin' your polo practice shamefully.

You'll be crabbin' the team if you don't look out. Dinin' here?"

"Yes," said Io. "Is Marie down?"

"Comin' presently. How about a couple of rubbers after dinner?"

To assent seemed the part of tact. Io and Ban went to their corner table, reserved for three, the third, Archie Densmore, being a prudent fiction. People drifted over to them, chatted awhile, were carried on and away by uncharted but normal social currents. It was a tribute to the accepted status between them that no one settled into the third chair. The Retreat is the dwelling-place of tact. All the conversationalists having come and gone, Io reverted over the coffee to the talk of their hearts.

"I can't expect you to understand me, can I? Especially as I don't understand myself. Don't sulk, Ban, dearest. You're so un-pretty when you pout."

He refused to accept the change to a lighter tone. "I understand this, Io; that you have begun unaccountably to mistrust me. That hurts."

"I don't want to hurt you. I'd rather hurt myself; a thousand times rather. Oh, I will marry you, of course, when the time comes! And yet--"

"Yet?"

"Isn't it strange, that deep-seated misgiving! I suppose it's my woman's dread of any change. It's been so perfect between us, Ban." Her speech dropped to its lowest breath of pure music:

"'This test for love:--in every kiss, sealed fast To feel the first kiss and forebode the last'--

So it has been with us; hasn't it, my lover?"

"So it shall always be," he answered, low and deep.

Her eyes dreamed. "How could any man feel what he put in those lines?"

she murmured.

"Some woman taught him," said Banneker.

She threw him a fairy kiss. "Why haven't we 'The Voices' here! You should read to me.... Do you ever wish we were back in the desert?"

"We shall be, some day."

She shuddered a little, involuntarily. "There's a sense of recall, isn't there! Do you still love it?"

"It's the beginning of the Road to Happiness," he said. "The place where I first saw you."

"You don't care for many things, though, Ban."

"Not many. Only two, vitally. You and the paper."

She made a curious reply pregnant of meanings which were to come back upon him afterward. "I shan't be jealous of that. Not as long as you're true to it. But I don't think you care for The Patriot, for itself."

"Oh, don't I!"

"If you do, it's only because it's part of you; your voice; your power.

Because it belongs to you. I wonder if you love me mostly for the same reason."