"That's nonsense, though. Don't mind me, Ban," she added with a wry
smile. "Plain colors are right for you. Browns, or blues, or reds, if
they're not too bright. And you've tied it very well. Did it take you
long to do it?"

Reddening and laughing, he admitted a prolonged and painful session
before his glass. Miss Van Arsdale sighed. It was such a faint,
abandoning breath of regret as might come from the breast of a mother
when she sees her little son in his first pride of trousers.

"Go out and say good-night to Miss Welland," she ordered, "and tell her
to go to bed. I've taken a sleeping powder."

Banneker obeyed. He rode home slowly and thoughtfully. His sleep was
sound enough that night.

Breakfast-getting processes did not appeal to him when he awoke in the
morning. He walked over, through the earliest light, to the hotel, where
he made a meal of musty eggs, chemical-looking biscuits, and coffee of a
rank hue and flavor, in an atmosphere of stale odors and flies,
sickeningly different from the dainty ceremonials of Io's preparation.
Rebuking himself for squeamishness, the station-agent returned to his
office, caught an O.S. from the wire, took some general instructions,
and went out to look at the weather. His glance never reached the
horizon.

In the foreground where he had swung the hammock under the alamo it
checked and was held, absorbed. A blanketed figure lay motionless in the
curve of the meshwork. One arm was thrown across the eyes, warding a
strong beam which had forced its way through the lower foliage. He
tiptoed forward.

Io's breast was rising and falling gently in the hardly perceptible
rhythm of her breathing. From the pale yellow surface of her dress,
below the neck, protruded a strange, edged something, dun-colored,
sharply defined and alien, which the man's surprised eyes failed to
identify. Slowly the edge parted and flattened out, broadwise,
displaying the marbled brilliance of the butterfly's inner wings,
illumining the pale chastity of the sleeping figure as if with a
quivering and evanescent jewel. Banneker, shaken and thrilled, closed
his eyes. He felt as if a soul had opened its secret glories to him.
When, commanding himself, he looked again, the living gem was gone. The
girl slept evenly.

Conning the position of the sun and the contour of the sheltering tree,
Banneker estimated that in a half-hour or less a flood of sunlight would
pour in upon the slumberer's face to awaken her