ve resigned. It's all arranged." He pointed to the pile of letters,
his night's work.

"What are you going to do?"

"How do I know! I beg your pardon, Miss Camilla. Write, I suppose."

"Write here."

"There's nothing to write about."

The exile, who had spent her years weaving exquisite music from the
rhythm of desert winds and the overtones of the forest silence, looked
about her, over the long, yellow-gray stretches pricked out with hints
of brightness, to the peaceful refuge of the pines, and again to the
naked and impudent meanness of the town. Across to her ears, borne on
the air heavy with rain still unshed, came the rollicking, ragging
jangle of the piano at the Sick Coyote.

"Aren't there people to write about there?" she said. "Tragedies and
comedies and the human drama? Barrie found it in a duller place."

"Not until he had seen the world first," he retorted quickly. "And I'm
not a Barrie.... I can't stay here, Miss Camilla."

"Poor Ban! Youth is always expecting life to fulfill itself. It
doesn't."

"No; it doesn't--unless you make it."

"And how will you make it?"

"I'm going to get on a newspaper."

"It isn't so easy as all that, Ban."

"I've been writing."

In the joyous flush of energy, evoked under the spell of Io's
enchantment, he had filled his spare hours with work, happy, exuberant,
overflowing with a quaint vitality. A description of the desert in
spate, thumb-nail sketches from a station-agent's window, queer little
flavorous stories of crime and adventure and petty intrigue in the town;
all done with a deftness and brevity that was saved from being too
abrupt only by broad touches of color and light. And he had had a
letter. He told Miss Van Arsdale of it.

"Oh, if you've a promise, or even a fair expectation of a place. But,
Ban, I wouldn't go to New York, anyway."

"Why not?"

"It's no use."

His strong eyebrows went up. "Use?"

"You won't find her there."

"She's not in New York?"

"No."

"You've heard from her, then? Where is she?"

"Gone abroad."

Upon that he meditated. "She'll come back, though."

"Not to you."

He waited, silent, attentive, incredulous.

"Ban; she's married."

"Married!"

The telegraph instrument clicked in the tiny rhythm of an elfin
bass-drum. "O.S. O.S." Click. Click. Click-click-click. Mechanically
responsive to his office he answered, and for a moment was concerned
with some message about a local freight. When he raised his fa