Young Banneker found that it was almost miraculously true.  Wherever he went, he established contacts with people who interested him and whom he interested:  here a brilliant, doubting, perturbed clergyman, slowly dying of tuberculosis in the desert; there a famous geologist from Washington who, after a night of amazing talk with the young prodigy while awaiting a train, took him along on a mountain exploration; again an artist and his wife who were painting the arid and colorful glories of the waste places.  From these and others he got much; but not friendship or permanent associations.  He did not want them.  He was essentially, though unconsciously, a lone spirit; so his listener gathered.  Advancement could have been his in the line of work which had by chance adopted him; but he preferred small, out-of-the-way stations, where he could be with his books and have room to breathe.  So here he was at Manzanita.  That was all there was to it.  Nothing very mysterious or remarkable about it, was there?

Io smiled in return.  “What is your name?” she asked.

“Errol.  But every one calls me Ban.”

“Haven’t you ever told this to any one before?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Why should I?”

“I don’t know really,” hesitated the girl, “except that it seems almost inhuman to keep one’s self so shut off.”

“It’s nobody else’s business.”

“Yet you’ve told it to me.  That’s very charming of you.”

“You said you’d be interested.”

“So I am.  It’s an extraordinary life, though you don’t seem to think so.”

“But I don’t want to be extraordinary.”

“Of course you do,” she refuted promptly.  “To be ordinary is—­is—­well, it’s like being a dust-colored beetle.”  She looked at him queerly.  “Doesn’t Miss Van Arsdale know all this?”

“I don’t see how she could.  I’ve never told her.”

“And she’s never asked you anything?”

“Not a word.  I don’t quite see Miss Camilla asking any one questions about themselves.  Did she ask you?”

The girl’s color deepened almost imperceptibly.  “You’re right,” she said.  “There’s a standard of breeding that we up-to-date people don’t attain.  But I’m at least intelligent enough to recognize it.  You reckon her as a friend, don’t you?”

“Why, yes; I suppose so.”

“Do you suppose you’d ever come to reckon me as one?” she asked, half bantering, half wistful.

“There won’t be time.  You’re running away.”

“Perhaps I might write you.  I think I’d like to.”

“Would you?” he murmured.  “Why?”

“You ought to be greatly flattered,” she reproved him.  “Instead you shoot a ‘why’ at me.  Well; because you’ve got something I haven’t got.  And when I find anything new like that, I always try to get some of it for myself.”

“I don’t know what it could be, but—­”

“Call it your philosophy of life.  Your contentment.  Or is it only detachment?  That can’t last, you know.”