by sat thinking. "Does Banneker know your--your
intentions?"

"No."

"You mustn't let him, Io."

"He won't know the intention. He may know the--the feeling back of it."
A slow and glorious flush rose in her face, making her eyes starry. "I
don't know that I can keep it from him, Cousin Billy. I don't even know
that I want to. I'm an honest sort of idiot, you know."

"God grant that he may prove as honest!" he half whispered.

Presently Banneker, bearing a glass of champagne and some pate
sandwiches for Io, supplanted the lawyer.

"Are you the devotee of toil that common report believes, Ban?" she
asked him lazily. "They say that you write editorials with one hand and
welcome your guests with the other."

"Not quite that," he answered. "To-night I'm not thinking of work. I'm
not thinking of anything but you. It's very wonderful, your being here."

"But I want you to think of work. I want to see you in the very act.
Won't you write an editorial for me?"

He shook his head. "This late? That would be cruelty to my secretary."

"I'll take it down for you. I'm fairly fast on the typewriter."

"Will you give me the subject, too?"

"No more than fair," she admitted. "What shall it be? It ought to be
something with memories in it. Books? Poetry?" she groped. "I've got it!
Your oldest, favorite book. Have you forgotten?"

"The Sears-Roebuck catalogue? I get a copy every season, to renew the
old thrill."

"What a romanticist you are!" said she softly. "Couldn't you write an
editorial about it?"

"Couldn't I? Try me. Come up to the den."

He led the way to the remote austerities of the work-room. From a shelf
he took down the fat, ornate pamphlet, now much increased in bulk over
its prototype of the earlier years. With random finger he parted the
leaves, here, there, again and still again, seeking auguries.

"Ready?" he said. "Now, I shut my eyes--and we're in the shack
again--the clean air of desert spaces--the click of the transmitter in
the office that I won't answer, being more importantly engaged--the
faint fragrance of _you_ permeating everything--youth--the unknown
splendor of life--Now! Go!"

Of that editorial, composed upon the unpromising theme of mail-order
merchandising, the Great Gaines afterward said that it was a
kaleidoscopic panorama set moving to the harmonic undertones of a song
of winds and waters, of passion and the inner meanings of life, as if
Shelley had rhapsodized a catalogue into po