o her, that is all."

Another horse was led forward and the pair rode away through the
glimmering heat.

It was a silent ride for Willis Enderby and Io. The girl was still a
little daunted at her own temerity in playing at fate with destinies as
big as these. As for Enderby, there was no room within his consciousness
for any other thought than that he was going to see Camilla Van Arsdale
again.

He heard her before he saw her. The rhythms of a song, a tender and gay
little lyric which she had sung to crowded drawing-rooms, but for him
alone, long years past, floated out to him, clear and pure, through the
clear, pure balm of the forest. He slipped quietly from his horse and
saw her, through the window, seated at her piano.

Unchanged! To his vision the years had left no impress on her. And Io,
at his side, saw too and marveled at the miracle. For the waiting woman
looked out of eyes as clear and untroubled as those of a child, softened
only with the questioning wistfulness of darkening vision. Suffering and
fortitude had etherealized the face back to youth, and that mysterious
expectancy which had possessed her for days had touched the curves of
her mouth to a wonderful tenderness, the softness of her cheek to a
quickening bloom. She turned her head slowly toward the door. Her lips
parted with the pressure of swift, small breaths.

Io felt the man's tense body, pressed against her as if for support,
convulsed with a tremor which left him powerless.

"I have brought some one to you, Miss Camilla," she said clearly: and in
the same instant of speaking, her word was crossed by the other's call:

"Willis!"

Sightless though she was, as Io knew, for anything not close before her
eyes, she came to him, as inevitably, as unerringly as steel to the
magnet, and was folded in his arms. Io heard his deep voice, vibrant
between desolation and passion:

"Fifteen years! My God, fifteen years!"

Io ran away into the forest, utterly glad with the joy of which she had
been minister.

Willis Enderby stayed five days at Manzanita; five days of ecstasy, of
perfect communion, bought from the rapacious years at the price of his
broken word. For that he was willing to pay any price exacted, asking
only that he might pay it alone, that the woman of his long and
self-denying love might not be called upon to meet any smallest part of
the debt. She walked with him under the pines: he read to her: and there
were long hours together o