"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."

Io's soft lips straightened. "It's rotten bad form. Why shouldn't he be right? It's so easy. Just a hint--"

"From you?"

"From either of us. Yes; from me, if you like."

"It's quite an intimate interest, isn't it?"

"'But never can battle of men compare With merciless feminine fray'"-- quoted Io pensively.

"Kipling is a sophomore about women," retorted Miss Van Arsdale. "We're not going to quarrel over Errol Banneker. The odds are too unfair."

"Unfair?" queried Io, with a delicate lift of brow.

"Don't misunderstand me. I know that whatever you do will be within the rules of the game. That's the touchstone of honor of your kind."

"Isn't it good enough? It ought to be, for it's about the only one most of us have." Io laughed. "We're becoming very serious. May I take the pony?"

"Yes. Will you be back for supper?"

"Of course. Shall I bring the paragon?"

"If you wish."

Outside the gaunt box of the station, Io, from the saddle sent forth her resonant, young call:

"Oh, Ban!"

"'Tis the voice of the Butterfly; hear her declare, 'I've come down to the earth; I am tired of the air'"

chanted Banneker's voice in cheerful paraphrase. "Light and preen your wings, Butterfly."

Their tone was that of comrades without a shade of anything deeper.

"Busy?" asked Io.

"Just now. Give me another five minutes."

"I'll go to the hammock."

One lone alamo tree, an earnest of spring water amongst the dry-sand growth of the cactus, flaunted its bright verdency a few rods back of the station, and in its shade Banneker had swung a hammock for Io. Hitching her pony and unfastening her hat, the girl stretched herself luxuriously in the folds. A slow wind, spice-laden with the faint, crisp fragrancies of the desert, swung her to a sweet rhythm. She closed her eyes happily ... and when she opened them, Banneker was standing over her, smiling.

"Don't speak to me," she murmured; "I want to believe that this will last forever."

Silent and acquiescent, he seated himself in a camp-chair close by. She stretched a hand to him, closing her eyes again.

"Swing me," she ordered.

He aided the wind to give a wider sweep to the hammock. Io stirred restlessly.

"You've broken the spell," she accused softly. "Weave me another one."

"What shall it be?" He bent over the armful of books which he had brought out.

"You choose this time."

"I wonder," he mused, regarding her consideringly.

"Ah, you may well wonder! I'm in a very special mood to-day."

"When aren't you, Butterfly?" he laughed.

"Beware that you don't spoil it. Choose well, or forever after hold your peace."

He lifted the well-worn and well-loved volume of poetry. It parted in his hand to the Rossetti sonnet. He began to read at the lines:

"When Work and Will awake too late, to gaze After their life sailed by, and hold their breath."

Io opened her eyes again.

"Why did you select that thing?"

"Why did you mark it?"

"Did I mark it?"

"Certainly, I'm not responsible for the sage-blossom between the pages."

"Ah, the sage! That's for wisdom," she paraphrased lightly.

"Do you think Rossetti so wise a preceptor?"

"It isn't often that he preaches. When he does, as in that sonnet--well, the inspiration may be a little heavy, but he does have something to say."

"Then it's the more evident that you marked it for some special reason."

"What supernatural insight," she mocked. "Can you read your name between the lines?"

"What is it that you want me to do?"

"You mean to ask what it is that Mr. Rossetti wants you to do. I didn't write the sonnet, you know."

"You didn't fashion the arrow, but you aimed it."

"Am I a good marksman?"

"I suppose you mean that I'm wasting my time here."

"Surely not!" she gibed. "Forming a link of transcontinental traffic. Helping to put a girdle 'round the earth in eighty days--or is it forty now?--enlightening the traveling public about the three-twenty-four train; dispensing time-tables and other precious mediums of education--"

"I'm happy here," he said doggedly.

"Are you going to be, always?"

His face darkened with doubt. "Why shouldn't I be?" he argued. "I've got everything I need. Some day I thought I might write."

"What about?" The question came sharp and quick.

He looked vaguely around the horizon.

"Oh, no, Ban!" she said. "Not this. You've got to know something besides cactuses and owls to write, these days. You've got to know men. And women," she added, in a curious tone, with a suspicion of effort, even of jealousy in it.

"I've never cared much for people," he said.

"It's an acquired taste, I suppose for some of us. There's something else." She came slowly to a sitting posture and fixed her questioning, baffling eyes on his. "Ban, don't you want to make a success in life?"

For a moment he did not answer. When he spoke, it was with apparent irrelevance to what she had said. "Once I went to a revival. A reformed tough was running it. About every three minutes he'd thrust out his hands and grab at the air and say, 'Oh, brothers; don't you yearn for Jesus?'"

"What has that to do with it?" questioned Io, surprised and impatient.

"Only that, somehow, the way you said 'success in life' made me think of him and his 'yearn for Jesus.'"

"Errol Banneker," said Io, amused in spite of her annoyance, "you are possessed of a familiar devil who betrays other people's inner thoughts to you. Success _is_ a species of religion to me, I suppose."

"And you are making converts, like all true enthusiasts. Tell, tell me. What kind of success?"

"Oh, power. Money. Position. Being somebody."

"I'm somebody here all right. I'm the station-agent of the Atkinson and St. Philip Railroad Company."

"Now you're trying to provoke me."

"No. But to get succe............