“Go out and say good-night to Miss Welland,” she ordered, “and tell her to go to bed.  I’ve taken a sleeping powder.”

Banneker obeyed.  He rode home slowly and thoughtfully.  His sleep was sound enough that night.

Breakfast-getting processes did not appeal to him when he awoke in the morning.  He walked over, through the earliest light, to the hotel, where he made a meal of musty eggs, chemical-looking biscuits, and coffee of a rank hue and flavor, in an atmosphere of stale odors and flies, sickeningly different from the dainty ceremonials of Io’s preparation.  Rebuking himself for squeamishness, the station-agent returned to his office, caught an O.S. from the wire, took some general instructions, and went out to look at the weather.  His glance never reached the horizon.

In the foreground where he had swung the hammock under the alamo it checked and was held, absorbed.  A blanketed figure lay motionless in the curve of the meshwork.  One arm was thrown across the eyes, warding a strong beam which had forced its way through the lower foliage.  He tiptoed forward.

Io’s breast was rising and falling gently in the hardly perceptible rhythm of her breathing.  From the pale yellow surface of her dress, below the neck, protruded a strange, edged something, dun-colored, sharply defined and alien, which the man’s surprised eyes failed to identify.  Slowly the edge parted and flattened out, broadwise, displaying the marbled brilliance of the butterfly’s inner wings, illumining the pale chastity of the sleeping figure as if with a quivering and evanescent jewel.  Banneker, shaken and thrilled, closed his eyes.  He felt as if a soul had opened its secret glories to him.  When, commanding himself, he looked again, the living gem was gone.  The girl slept evenly.

Conning the position of the sun and the contour of the sheltering tree, Banneker estimated that in a half-hour or less a flood of sunlight would pour in upon the slumberer’s face to awaken her.  Cautiously withdrawing, he let himself into the shack, lighted his oil stove, put on water to boil, set out the coffee and the stand.  He felt different about breakfast-getting now.  Having prepared the arrangements for his prospective guest, he returned and leaned against the alamo, filling his eyes with still delight of the sleeper.

Youthful, untouched, fresh though the face was, in the revealing stillness of slumber, it suggested rather than embodied something indefinably ancient, a look as of far and dim inheritances, subtle, ironic, comprehending, and aloof; as if that delicate and strong beauty of hers derived intimately from the wellsprings of the race; as if womanhood, eternal triumphant, and elusive were visibly patterned there.

Banneker, leaning against the slender tree-trunk, dreamed over her, happily and aimlessly.

Io opened her eyes to meet his.  She stirred softly and smiled at him.

“So you discovered me,” she said.