In truth, the whole reason for his coming to Arizora and whatever fantastic project might be at the bottom of it appeared now strangely linked with this latest turn of fate, his coming to the Casa O’Donoju. Grant became aware of a duty long overlooked and wrote a brief and non-committal note to Bim Bagley, in Arizora, saying only he had suffered an accident and would return to the Border town as soon as he was able. This Benicia took from him to give to Quelele when he should go to the nearest railroad town. Two days thereafter befell a boon the wounded man had dreamed of during many yearning hours. Two male servants of the household came to dress him in one of Don Padraic’s white suits--his own clothes were rags--and assisted him down a long hall which turned into the green paradise of the patio. There under the royal date palm they sat him, with the fountain pool and its magic purple sails of the hyacinth at his feet, behind and on either hand the green and crimson glory of the geraniums. Benicia was awaiting him there alone. The girl, in a simple green frock which revealed bare arms and the warm round of her shoulders, was the embodiment of the garden’s fairy essence. She was a sprite of this green and glowing place. Hot sunlight falling upon her head made it a great exotic flower. “Now both of us can revel in being lawbreakers,” she exclaimed when the Indians had bowed themselves out. She was hovering about Grant, patting into place the gay serape which covered his knees. “Lawbreakers!” Grant’s glowing eyes bespoke the intoxication of pleasure. “I feel, rather, like a prisoner whose sentence is commuted.” The girl’s rippling laughter ended with, “Oh, but my father said you should not be moved for three days yet. Now he has gone into town with Quelele and you and I are breaking the law--with you equally guilty.” “What man would not rush into crime with you to lead?” he rallied, and the little game of give and take in joke and repartee which had been of their devising these last few days of Grant’s convalescence, when Benicia made her daily visits at his bedside, was resumed. It was in this course their friendship had grown: on a basis of comradeship and with healthy minds in apposition, giving and finding something of humour, of rollicking fun. No angling for sickly sentimentalism on the part of this unspoiled girl of the waste places--so Grant during hours of staring at the ceiling had appraised the heart of Benicia O’Donoju; no place in their communion for any of the trite nothings a man burbles into concealed ear of a flapper over tea or whatever else comes from the sophisticated city teapot.