“Poor Ban!  Youth is always expecting life to fulfill itself.  It doesn’t.”

“No; it doesn’t—­unless you make it.”

“And how will you make it?”

“I’m going to get on a newspaper.”

“It isn’t so easy as all that, Ban.”

“I’ve been writing.”

In the joyous flush of energy, evoked under the spell of Io’s enchantment, he had filled his spare hours with work, happy, exuberant, overflowing with a quaint vitality.  A description of the desert in spate, thumb-nail sketches from a station-agent’s window, queer little flavorous stories of crime and adventure and petty intrigue in the town; all done with a deftness and brevity that was saved from being too abrupt only by broad touches of color and light.  And he had had a letter.  He told Miss Van Arsdale of it.

“Oh, if you’ve a promise, or even a fair expectation of a place.  But, Ban, I wouldn’t go to New York, anyway.”

“Why not?”

“It’s no use.”

His strong eyebrows went up.  “Use?”

“You won’t find her there.”

“She’s not in New York?”

“No.”

“You’ve heard from her, then?  Where is she?”

“Gone abroad.”

Upon that he meditated.  “She’ll come back, though.”

“Not to you.”

He waited, silent, attentive, incredulous.

“Ban; she’s married.”

“Married!”

The telegraph instrument clicked in the tiny rhythm of an elfin bass-drum.  “O.S.  O.S.”  Click.  Click.  Click-click-click.  Mechanically responsive to his office he answered, and for a moment was concerned with some message about a local freight.  When he raised his face again, Miss Van Arsdale read there a sick and floundering skepticism.

“Married!” he repeated.  “Io!  She couldn’t.”

The woman, startled by the conviction in his tone, wondered how much that might imply.

“She wrote me,” said she presently.

“That she was married?”

“That she would be by the time the letter reached me.”

("You will think me a fool,” the girl had written impetuously, “and perhaps a cruel fool.  But it is the wise thing, really.  Del Eyre is so safe!  He is safety itself for a girl like me.  And I have discovered that I can’t wholly trust myself....  Be gentle with him, and make him do something worth while.”)

“Ah!” said Ban.  “But that—­”

“And I have the newspaper since with an account of the wedding....  Ban!  Don’t look like that!”

“Like what?” said he stupidly.

“You look like Pretty Willie as I saw him when he was working himself up for the killing.”  Pretty Willie was the soft-eyed young desperado who had cleaned out the Sick Coyote.

“Oh, I’m not going to kill anybody,” he said with a touch of grim amusement for her fears.  “Not even myself.”  He rose and went to the door.  “Do you mind, Miss Camilla?” he added appealingly.