"No; you wouldn't. Never mind. You will if you ever get into the game.

Hello! This is something different again. 'The Undying Voices.' Do you go in for poetry?"

"I like to read it once in a while."

"Good man!" Gardner took down the book, which opened in his hand. He glanced into it, then turned an inquiring and faintly quizzical look upon Banneker. "So Rossetti is one of the voices that sings to you. He sang to me when I was younger and more romantic. Heavens! he can sing, can't he! And you've picked one of his finest for your floral decoration." He intoned slowly and effectively:

"Ah, who shall dare to search in what sad maze Thenceforth their incommunicable ways Follow the desultory feet of Death?"

Banneker took the book from him. Upon the sonnet a crushed bloom of the sage had left its spiced and fragrant stain. How came it there? Through but one possible agency of which Banneker could think. Io Welland!

After the reporter had left him, Banneker bore the volume to his room and read the sonnet again and again, devout and absorbed, a seeker for the oracle.

CHAPTER X

"Wouldn't you like to know when I'm going home?"

Io Welland looked up from beneath her dark lashes at her hostess with a mixture of mischief and deprecation.

"No," said Miss Van Arsdale quietly.

"Ah? Well, I would. Here it is two full weeks since I settled down on you. Why don't you evict me?"

Miss Van Arsdale smiled. The girl continued:

"Why don't I evict myself? I'm quite well and sane again--at least I think so--thanks to you. Very well, then, Io; why don't you go home?"

"Instinct of self-preservation," suggested the other. "You're better off here until your strength is quite restored, aren't you?"

The girl propped her chin in her hand and turned upon her companion a speculative regard. "Camilla Van Arsdale, you don't really like me," she asserted.

"Liking is such an undefined attitude," replied the other, unembarrassed.

"You find me diverting," defined Io. "But you resent me, don't you?"

"That's rather acute in you. I don't like your standards nor those of your set."

"I've abandoned them."

"You'll resume them as soon as you get back."

"Shall I ever get back?" The girl moved to the door. Her figure swayed forward yieldingly as if she would give herself into the keeping of the sun-drenched, pine-soaked air. "Enchantment!" she murmured.

"It is a healing place," said the habitant of it, low, as if to herself.

A sudden and beautiful pity softened and sobered Io's face. "Miss Van Arsdale," said she with quiet sincerity; "if there should ever come a time when I can do you a service in word or deed, I would come from the other side of the world to do it."

"That is a kindly, but rather exaggerated gratitude."

"It isn't gratitude. It's loyalty. Whatever you have done, I believe you were right. And, right or wrong, I--I am on your side. But I wonder why you have been so good to me. Was it a sort of class feeling?"

"Sex feeling would be nearer it," replied the other. "There is something instinctive which makes women who are alone stand by each other."

Io nodded. "I suppose so. Though I've never felt it, or the need of it before this. Well, I had to speak before I left, and I suppose I must go on soon."

"I shall miss you," said the hostess, and added, smiling, "as one misses a stimulant. Stay through the rest of the month, anyway."

"I'd like to," answered Io gratefully. "I've written Delavan that I'm coming back--and now I'm quite dreading it. Do you suppose there ever yet was a woman with understanding of herself?"

"Not unless she was a very dull and stupid woman with little to understand," smiled Miss Van Arsdale. "What are you doing to-day?"

"Riding down to lunch with your paragon of a station-agent."

Miss Van Arsdale shook her head dubiously. "I'm afraid he'll miss his daily stimulant after you've gone. It has been daily, hasn't it?"

"I suppose it has, just about," admitted the girl. "The stimulus hasn't been all on one side, I assure you. What a mind to be buried here in the desert! And what an annoying spirit of contentment! It's that that puzzles me. Sometimes it enrages me."

"Are you going to spoil what you cannot replace?" The retort was swift, almost fierce.

"Surely, you won't blame me if he looks beyond this horizon," protested Io. "Life is sure to reach out in one form or another and seize on him.

I told him so."

"Yes," breathed the other. "You would."

"What were you intending to do with him?"

There was a hint of challenge in the slight emphasis given to the query.

"I? Nothing. He is under no obligation to me."

"There you and he differ. He regards you as an infallible mentor." A twinkle of malice crept into the slumbrous eyes. "Why do you let him wear made-up bow ties?" demanded Io.

"What does it matter?"

"Out here, nothing. But elsewhere--well, it does define a man, doesn't it?"

"Undoubtedly. I've never gone into it with him."

"I wonder if I could guess why."

"Very likely. You seem preternaturally acute in these matters."

"Is it because the Sears-Roebuck mail-order double-bow knot in polka-dot pattern stands as a sign of pristine innocence?"

In spite of herself Miss Van Arsdale laughed. "Something of that sort."