ed from her eager loveliness. "I don't
know. Perhaps a year. He suffers abominably, poor fellow."

"And after--after _that_, how long before you can marry me?"

She twinkled at him mischievously. "So, after all these years, my lover
makes me an offer of marriage. Why didn't you ask me at Manzanita?"

"Good God! Would it possibly--"

"No; no! I shouldn't have said it. I was teasing."

"You know that there's never been a moment when the one thing worth
living and fighting and striving for wasn't you."

"And success?" she taunted, but with tenderness.

"Another name for you. I wanted it only as the reflex of your wish for
me."

"Even when I'd left you?"

"Even when you'd left me."

"Poor Ban!" she breathed, and for a moment her fingers fluttered at his
cheek. "Have I made it up to you?"

He bent over the long, low chair in which she half reclined. "A thousand
times! Every day that I see you; every day that I think of you; with the
lightest touch of your hand; the sound of your voice; the turn of your
face toward me. I'm jealous of it and fearful of it. Can you wonder that
I live in a torment of dread lest something happen to bring it all to
ruin?"

She shook her head. "Nothing could. Unless--No. I won't say it. I want
you to want to marry me, Ban. But--I wonder."

As they talked, the little light of late afternoon had dwindled, until
in their nook they could see each other only as vague forms.

"Isn't there a table-lamp there?" she asked. "Turn it on."

He found and pulled the chain. The glow, softly shaded, irradiated Io's
lineaments, showing her thoughtful, somber, even a little apprehensive.
She lifted the shade and turned it to throw the direct rays upon
Banneker. He blinked.

"Do you mind?" she asked softly. Even more softly, she added, "Do you
remember?"

His mind veered back across the years, full of struggle, of triumph, of
emptiness, of fulfillment, to a night in another world; a world of
dreams, magic associations, high and peaceful ambitions, into which had
broken a voice and an appeal from the darkness. He had turned the light
upon himself then that she might see him for what he was and have no
fear. So he held it now, lifting it above his forehead. Hypnotized by
the compulsion of memory, she said, as she had said to the unknown
helper in the desert shack:

"I don't know you. Do I?"

"Io!"

"Ah! I didn't mean to say that. It came back to me, Ban. Perhaps it's
true. _Do_ I know you?"