CHAPTER XVIII

Sun-lulled into immobility, the desert around the lonely little station of Manzanita smouldered and slumbered. Nothing was visibly changed from five years before, when Banneker left, except that another agent, a disillusioned-appearing young man with a corn-colored mustache, came forth to meet the slow noon local, chuffing pantingly in under a bad head of alkali-water steam. A lone passenger, obviously Eastern in mien and garb, disembarked, and was welcomed by a dark, beautiful, harassed-looking girl who had just ridden in on a lathered pony. The agent, a hopeful soul, ambled within earshot.

"How is she?" he heard the man say, with the intensity of a single thought, as the girl took his hand. Her reply came, encouragingly.

"As brave as ever. Stronger, a little, I think."

"And she--the eyes?"

"She will be able to see you; but not clearly."

"How long--" began the man, but his voice broke. He shook in the bitter heat as if from some inner and deadly chill.

"Nobody can tell. She hoards her sight."

"To see me?" he cried eagerly. "Have you told her?"

"No."

"Is that wise?" he questioned. "The shock--"

"I think that she suspects; she senses your coming. Her face has the rapt expression that I have seen only when she plays. Has had since you started. Yet there is no possible way in which she could have learned."

"That is very wonderful," said the stranger, in a hushed voice. Then, hesitantly, "What shall I do, Io?"

"Nothing," came the girl's clear answer. "Go to her, that is all."

Another horse was led forward and the pair rode away through the glimmering heat.

It was a silent ride for Willis Enderby and Io. The girl was still a little daunted at her own temerity in playing at fate with destinies as big as these. As for Enderby, there was no room within his consciousness for any other thought than that he was going to see Camilla Van Arsdale again.

He heard her before he saw her. The rhythms of a song, a tender and gay little lyric which she had sung to crowded drawing-rooms, but for him alone, long years past, floated out to him, clear and pure, through the clear, pure balm of the forest. He slipped quietly from his horse and saw her, through the window, seated at her piano.

Unchanged! To his vision the years had left no impress on her. And Io, at his side, saw too and marveled at the miracle. For the waiting woman looked out of eyes as clear and untroubled as those of a child, softened only with the questioning wistfulness of darkening vision. Suffering and fortitude had etherealized the face back to youth, and that mysterious expectancy which had possessed her for days had touched the curves of her mouth to a wonderful tenderness, the softness of her cheek to a quickening bloom. She turned her head slowly toward the door. Her lips parted with the pressure of swift, small breaths.

Io felt the man's tense body, pressed against her as if for support, convulsed with a tremor which left him powerless.

"I have brought some one to you, Miss Camilla," she said clearly: and in the same instant of speaking, her word was crossed by the other's call:

"Willis!"

Sightless though she was, as Io knew, for anything not close before her eyes, she came to him, as inevitably, as unerringly as steel to the magnet, and was folded in his arms. Io heard his deep voice, vibrant between desolation and passion:

"Fifteen years! My God, fifteen years!"

Io ran away into the forest, utterly glad with the joy of which she had been minister.

Willis Enderby stayed five days at Manzanita; five days of ecstasy, of perfect communion, bought from the rapacious years at the price of his broken word. For that he was willing to pay any price exacted, asking only that he might pay it alone, that the woman of his long and self-denying love might not be called upon to meet any smallest part of the debt. She walked with him under the pines: he read to her: and there were long hours together over the piano. It was then that there was born, out of Camilla Van Arsdale's love and faith and coming abnegation, her holy and deathless song for the dead, to the noble words of the "Dominus Illuminatio Mea," which to-day, chanted over the coffins of thousands, brings comfort and hope to stricken hearts.

"In the hour of death, after this life's whim, When the heart beats low, and the eyes grow dim, And pain has exhausted every limb-- The lover of the Lord shall trust in Him."

On the last day she told him that they would not meet again. Life had given to her all and more than all she had dared ask for. He must go back to his work in the world, to the high endeavor that was laid upon him as an obligation of his power, and now of their love. He must write her; she could not do without that, now; but guardedly, for other eyes than hers must read his words to her.

"Think what it is going to be to me," she said, "to follow your course; to be able to pray for you, fighting. I shall take all the papers. And any which haven't your name in shall be burned at once! How I shall be jealous even of your public who love and admire you! But you have left me no room for any other jealousy...."

"I am coming back to you," he said doggedly, at the final moment of parting. "Sometime, Camilla."

"You will be here always, in the darkness, with me. And I shall love my blindness because it shuts out anything but you," she said.

Io rode with him to the station. On the way they discussed ways and means, the household arrangements when Io should have to leave, the finding of a companion, who should be at once nurse, secretary, and amanuensis for Royce Melvin's music.

"How she will sing now!" said Io.

As they drew near to the station, she put her hand on his horse's bridle.

"Did I do wrong to send for you, Cousin Billy?" she asked.

He turned to her a visage transfigured.

"You needn't answer," she said quickly. "I should know, anyway. It's her happiness I'm thinking of. It can't have been wrong to give so much happiness, for the rest of her life."

"The rest of her life," he echoed, in a hushed accent of dread.

While Enderby was getting his ticket, Io waited on the front platform. A small, wiry man came around the corner of the station, glanced at her, and withdrew. Io had an uneasy notion of having seen him before somewhere. But where, and when? Certainly the man was not a local habitant. Had his presence, then, any significance for her or hers?

Enderby returned, and the two stood in the hard morning sunlight beneath the broad sign inscribed with the station's name.

The stranger appeared from behind a freight-car on a siding, and hurried up to within a few yards of them. From beneath his coat he slipped a blackish oblong. It gave forth a click, and, after swift manipulation, a second click. Enderby started toward the snap-shotter who turned and ran.

"Do you know that man?" he asked, whirling upon Io.

A gray veil seemed to her drawn down over his features. Or was it a mist of dread upon Io's own vision?

"I have seen him before," she answered, groping.

"Who is he?"

Memory flashed one of its sudden and sure illuminations upon her: a Saturday night at The House With Three Eyes; this little man coming in with Tertius Marrineal; later, peering into the flowerful corner where she sat with Banneker.

"He has something to do with The Patriot," she answered steadily.

"How could The Patriot know of my coming here?'

"I don't know," said Io. She was deadly pale with a surmise too monstrous for utterance.

He put it into words for her.

"Io, did you tell Errol Banneker that you were sending for me?"