“I don’t know.”

“Find out.  Don’t sleep very well, do you?”

“Not specially.”

“What do you do at night when you can’t sleep?  Work?”

“No.”

“Well?”

“Think.”

The doctor uttered a non-professional monosyllable.  “What will you do,” he propounded, waving his arm back along the trail toward the Van Arsdale camp, “when this little game of yours is played out?”

“God knows!” said Banneker.  It suddenly struck him that life would be blank, empty of interest or purpose, when Camilla Van Arsdale died, when there was no longer the absorbing necessity to preserve, intact and impregnable, the fortress of love and lies wherewith he had surrounded her.

“When this chapter is finished,” said the other, “you come down to Angelica City with me.  Perhaps we’ll go on a little camping trip together.  I want to talk to you.”

The train carried him away.  Oppressed and thoughtful, Banneker walked slowly across the blazing, cactus-set open toward his shack.  There was still the simple housekeeping work to be done, for he had left early that morning.  He felt suddenly spiritless, flaccid, too inert even for the little tasks before him.  The physician’s pronouncement had taken the strength from him.  Of course he had known that it couldn’t be very long—­but only a few weeks!

He was almost at the shack when he noticed that the door stood half ajar.

But here, where everything had been disorder, was now order.  The bed was made, the few utensils washed, polished, and hung up; on the table a handful of the alamo’s bright leaves in a vase gave a touch of color.

In the long chair (7 T 4031 of the Sears-Roebuck catalogue) sat Io.  A book lay on her lap, the book of “The Undying Voices.”  Her eyes were closed.  Banneker reached out a hand to the door lintel for support.

A light tremor ran through Io’s body.  She opened her eyes, and fixed them on Banneker.  She rose slowly.  The book fell to the floor and lay open between them.  Io stood, her arms hanging straitly at her side, her whole face a lovely and loving plea.

“Please, Ban!” she said, in a voice so little that it hardly came to his ears.

Speech and motion were denied him, in the great, the incredible surprise of her presence.

“Please, Ban, forgive me.”  She was like a child, beseeching.  Her firm little chin quivered.  Two great, soft, lustrous tears welled up from the shadowy depths of the eyes and hung, gleaming, above the lashes.  “Oh, aren’t you going to speak to me!” she cried.

At that the bonds of his languor were rent.  He leapt to her, heard the broken music of her sob, felt her arms close about him, her lips seek his and cling, loath to relinquish them even for the passionate murmurs of her love and longing for him.

“Hold me close, Ban!  Don’t ever let me go again!  Don’t ever let me doubt again!”