light in her
eyes.

"I've told you that he was romantic," warned the other.

"What higher recommendation could there be? I shall sit in the boat with
him and talk nautical language. Has he a yachting cap? Oh, do tell me
that he has a yachting cap!"

Miss Van Arsdale, smiling, shook her head, but her eyes were troubled.
There was compunction in Io's next remark.

"I'm really going over to see about accommodations. Sooner or later I
must face the music--meaning Carty. I'm fit enough now, thanks to you."

"Wouldn't an Eastern trip be safer?" suggested her hostess.

"An Eastern trip would be easier. But I've made my break, and it's in
the rules, as I understand them, that I've got to see it through. If he
can get me now"--she gave a little shrug--"but he can't. I've come to my
senses."

Sunlight pale, dubious, filtering through the shaken cloud veils,
ushered in the morning. Meager of promise though it was, Io's spirits
brightened. Declining the offer of a horse in favor of a pocket compass,
she set out afoot, not taking the trail, but forging straight through
the heavy forest for the line of desert. Around her, brisk and busy
flocks of pinon jays darted and twittered confidentially. The warm spice
of the pines was sweet in her nostrils. Little stirrings and rustlings
just beyond the reach of vision delightfully and provocatively suggested
the interest which she was inspiring by her invasion among the lesser
denizens of the place. The sweetness and intimacy of an unknown life
surrounded her. She sang happily as she strode, lithe and strong and
throbbing with unfulfilled energies and potencies, through the
springtide of the woods.

But when she emerged upon the desert, she fell silent. A spaciousness as
of endless vistas enthralled and, a little, awed her. On all sides were
ranged the disordered ranks of the cacti, stricken into immobility in
the very act of reconstituting their columns, so that they gave the
effect of a discord checked on the verge of its resolution into form and
harmony, yet with a weird and distorted beauty of its own. From a little
distance, there came a murmur of love-words. Io moved softly forward,
peering curiously, and from the arc of a wide curving ocatilla two wild
doves sprang, leaving the branch all aquiver. Bolder than his companions
of the air, a cactus owl, perched upon the highest column of a great
green candelabrum, viewed her with a steady detachment, "sleepless, with
cold, comme