As in the long ago he answered her: "Are you afraid of me?"

"Of everything. Of the future. Of what I don't know in you."

"There's nothing of me that you don't know," he averred.

"Isn't there?" She was infinitely wistful; avid of reassurance. Before
he could answer she continued: "That night in the rain when I first saw
you, under the flash, as I see you now--Ban, dear, how little you've
changed, how wonderfully little, to the eye!--the instant I saw you, I
trusted you."

"Do you trust me now?" he asked for the delight of hearing her declare
it.

Instead he heard, incredulously, the doubt in her tone. "Do I? I want
to--so much! I did then. At first sight."

He set down the lamp. She could hear him breathing quick and
stressfully. He did not speak.

"At first sight," she repeated. "And--I think--I loved you from that
minute. Though of course I didn't know. Not for days. Then, when I'd
gone, I found what I'd never dreamed of; how much I could love."

"And now?" he whispered.

"Ah, more than then!" The low cry leapt from her lips. "A thousand times
more."

"But you don't trust me?"

"Why don't I, Ban?" she pleaded. "What have you done? How have you
changed?"

He shook his head. "Yet you've given me your love. Do you trust
yourself?"

"Yes," she answered with a startling quietude of certainty. "In that I
do. Absolutely."

"Then I'll chance the rest. You're upset to-night, aren't you, Io?
You've let your imagination run away with you."

"This isn't a new thing to me. It began--I don't know when it began.
Yes; I do. Before I ever knew or thought of you. Oh, long before! When I
was no more than a baby."

"Rede me your riddle, love," he said lightly.

"It's so silly. You mustn't laugh; no, you wouldn't laugh. But you
mustn't be angry with me for being a fool. Childhood impressions are
terribly lasting things, Ban.... Yes, I'm going to tell you. It was a
nurse I had when I was only four, I think; such a pretty, dainty Irish
creature, the pink-and-black type. She used to cry over me and say--I
don't suppose she thought I would ever understand or remember--'Beware
the brown-eyed boys, darlin'. False an' foul they are, the brown ones.
They take a girl's poor heart an' witch it away an' twitch it away, an'
toss it back all crushed an' spoilt.' Then she would hug me and sob. She
left soon after; but the warning has haunted me like a superstition....
Could you kiss it away, Ban? Tell me I'm a little fool!"