“If her condition is critical I’ll wire for you,” promised lo.  “Otherwise you mustn’t come.”

With that he must make shift to be content; that and a swift clasp of her arms, a clinging pressure of her lips, and her soft “Good-bye.  Oh, good-bye!  Love me every minute while I’m gone,” before the tactful Esther Forbes, somewhat miscast in the temporary role of Propriety, returned from a conversation with the porter to say that they really must get off that very instant or be carried westward to the eternal scandal of society which would not understand a triangular elopement.

Loneliness no longer beset Banneker, even though Io was farther separated from him than before in the unimportant reckoning of geographical miles; for now she was on his errand.  He held her by the continuous thought of a vital common interest.  In place of the former bereavement of spirit was a new and consuming anxiety for Camilla Van Arsdale.  Io’s first telegram from Manzanita went far to appease that.  Miss Van Arsdale had suffered a severe shock, but was now on the road to recovery:  Io would stay indefinitely:  there was no reason for Banneker’s coming out for the present:  in fact, the patient definitely prohibited it:  letter followed.

The letter, when it came, forced a cry, as of physical pain, from Banneker’s throat.  Camilla Van Arsdale was going blind.  Some obscure reflex of the heart trouble had affected the blood supply of the eyes, and the shock of discovering this had reacted upon the heart.  There was no immediate danger; but neither was there ultimate hope of restored vision.  So much the eminent oculist whom Io had brought from Angelica City told her.

Your first thought (wrote Io) will be to come out here at once.  Don’t.  It will be much better for you to wait until she needs you more; until you can spend two or three weeks or a month with her.  Now I can help her through the days by reading to her and walking with her.  You don’t know how happy it makes me to be here where I first knew you, to live over every event of those days.  Your movable shack is almost as it used to be, though there is no absurd 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.