“I’m sorry,” murmured the girl.

“What have you been doing all day?” asked Miss Van Arsdale, holding out her hands toward the fire.

“Resting.  Thinking.  Scaring myself with bogy-thoughts of what I’ve escaped.”  Io smiled and sighed.  “I hadn’t known how worn out I was until I woke up this morning.  I don’t think I ever before realized the meaning of refuge.”

“You’ll recover from the need of it soon enough,” promised the other.  She crossed to the piano.  “What kind of music do you want?  No; don’t tell me.  I should be able to guess.”  Half turning on the bench she gazed speculatively at the lax figure on the rug.  “Chopin, I think.  I’ve guessed right?  Well, I don’t think I shall play you Chopin to-day.  You don’t need that kind of—­of—­well, excitation.”

Musing for a moment over a soft mingling of chords she began with a little ripple of melody, MacDowell’s lovely, hurrying, buoyant “Improvisation,” with its aeolian vibrancies, its light, bright surges of sound, sinking at the last into cradled restfulness.  Without pause or transition she passed on to Grieg; the wistful, remote appeal of the strangely misnamed “Erotique,” plaintive, solemn, and in the fulfillment almost hymnal:  the brusque pursuing minors of the wedding music, and the diamond-shower of notes of the sun-path song, bleak, piercing, Northern sunlight imprisoned in melody.  Then, the majestic swing of Ase’s death-chant, glorious and mystical.

“Are you asleep?” asked the player, speaking through the chords.

“No,” answered Io’s tremulous voice.  “I’m being very unhappy.  I love it!”

Bang!  It was a musical detonation, followed by a volley of chords and then a wild, swirling waltz; and Miss Van Arsdale jumped up and stood over her guest.  “There!” she said.  “That’s better than letting you pamper yourself with the indulgence of unhappiness.”

“But I want to be unhappy,” pouted Io.  “I want to be pampered.”

“Naturally.  You always will be, I expect, as long as there are men in the world to do your bidding.  However, I must see to supper.”

So for two days Io Welland lolled and lazed and listened to Miss Van Arsdale’s music, or read, or took little walks between showers.  No further mention was made by her hostess of the circumstances of the visit.  She was a reticent woman; almost saturnine, Io decided, though her perfect and effortless courtesy preserved her from being antipathetic to any one beneath her own roof.  How much her silence as to the unusual situation was inspired by consideration for her guest, how much due to natural reserve, Io could not estimate.

A little less reticence would have been grateful to her as the hours spun out and she felt her own spirit expand slowly in the calm.  It was she who introduced the subject of Banneker.

“Our quaint young station-agent seems to have abandoned his responsibilities so far as I’m concerned,” she observed.