Approaching footsteps broke in upon them. The square bulk of Jim
Maitland appeared in the doorway.

"What ho! you two. Ban, you're scampin' your polo practice shamefully.
You'll be crabbin' the team if you don't look out. Dinin' here?"

"Yes," said Io. "Is Marie down?"

"Comin' presently. How about a couple of rubbers after dinner?"

To assent seemed the part of tact. Io and Ban went to their corner
table, reserved for three, the third, Archie Densmore, being a prudent
fiction. People drifted over to them, chatted awhile, were carried on
and away by uncharted but normal social currents. It was a tribute to
the accepted status between them that no one settled into the third
chair. The Retreat is the dwelling-place of tact. All the
conversationalists having come and gone, Io reverted over the coffee to
the talk of their hearts.

"I can't expect you to understand me, can I? Especially as I don't
understand myself. Don't sulk, Ban, dearest. You're so un-pretty when
you pout."

He refused to accept the change to a lighter tone. "I understand this,
Io; that you have begun unaccountably to mistrust me. That hurts."

"I don't want to hurt you. I'd rather hurt myself; a thousand times
rather. Oh, I will marry you, of course, when the time comes! And yet--"

"Yet?"

"Isn't it strange, that deep-seated misgiving! I suppose it's my woman's
dread of any change. It's been so perfect between us, Ban." Her speech
dropped to its lowest breath of pure music:

"'This test for love:--in every kiss, sealed fast
To feel the first kiss and forebode the last'--

So it has been with us; hasn't it, my lover?"

"So it shall always be," he answered, low and deep.

Her eyes dreamed. "How could any man feel what he put in those lines?"
she murmured.

"Some woman taught him," said Banneker.

She threw him a fairy kiss. "Why haven't we 'The Voices' here! You
should read to me.... Do you ever wish we were back in the desert?"

"We shall be, some day."

She shuddered a little, involuntarily. "There's a sense of recall, isn't
there! Do you still love it?"

"It's the beginning of the Road to Happiness," he said. "The place where
I first saw you."

"You don't care for many things, though, Ban."

"Not many. Only two, vitally. You and the paper."

She made a curious reply pregnant of meanings which were to come back
upon him afterward. "I shan't be jealous of that. Not as long as you're
true to it. But I don't think you care for