bsurd steel boat outside
for me to stumble into.

Would you believe it; the new station-agent has a Sears-Roebuck
catalogue! I borrowed it of him to read. What, oh, what should a
sensible person--yes, I am a sensible person, Ban, outside of my love
for you--and I'd scorn to be sensible about that--Where was I?
Oh, yes; what should a sensible person find in these simple words
"Two horse-power, reliable and smooth-running, economical of gasoline,"
and so on, to make her want to cry? Ban, send me a copy of
"The Voices."

He sent her "The Undying Voices" and other books to read, and long,
impassioned letters, and other letters to be read to Camilla Van Arsdale
whose waning vision must be spared in every possible way.

Hour after hour (wrote Io) she sits at the piano and makes her wonderful
music, and tries to write it down. There I can be of very little help to
her. Then she will go back into her room and lie on the big couch near
the window where the young, low pines brush the wall, with Cousin Billy's
photograph in her hands, and be so deathly quiet that I sometimes get
frightened and creep up to the door to peer in and be sure that she is
all right. To-day when I looked in at the door I heard her say, quite
softly to herself: "I shall die without seeing his face again." I had to
hold my breath and run out into the forest. Ban, I didn't know that it
was in me to cry so--not since that night on the train when I left
you.... This all seems so wicked and wrong and--yes--wasteful. Think of
what these two splendid people could be to each other! She craves him so,
Ban; just the sound of his voice, a word from him; but she won't break
her own word. Sometimes I think I shall do it. Write me all you can about
him, Ban, and send papers: all the political matter. You can't imagine
what it is to her only to hear about him.

So Banneker had clippings collected, wrote a little daily political
bulletin for Io; even went out of his way editorially to pay an
occasional handsome tribute to Judge Enderby's personal character,
whilst adducing cogent reasons why, as the "Wall Street and traction
candidate," he should be defeated. But his personal opinion, expressed
for the behoof of his correspondents in Manzanita, was that he probably
could not be defeated; that his brilliant and aggressive campaign was
forcing Marrineal to a defensive and losing fight.

"It is a great asset in politics," wrote Banneker to Miss Camilla, "to
have nothin