“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!”

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.