He found and pulled the chain. The glow, softly shaded, irradiated Io's lineaments, showing her thoughtful, somber, even a little apprehensive. She lifted the shade and turned it to throw the direct rays upon Banneker. He blinked. "Do you mind?" she asked softly. Even more softly, she added, "Do you remember?" His mind veered back across the years, full of struggle, of triumph, of emptiness, of fulfillment, to a night in another world; a world of dreams, magic associations, high and peaceful ambitions, into which had broken a voice and an appeal from the darkness. He had turned the light upon himself then that she might see him for what he was and have no fear. So he held it now, lifting it above his forehead. Hypnotized by the compulsion of memory, she said, as she had said to the unknown helper in the desert shack: "I don't know you. Do I?" "Io!" "Ah! I didn't mean to say that. It came back to me, Ban. Perhaps it's true. _Do_ I know you?" As in the long ago he answered her: "Are you afraid of me?" "Of everything. Of the future. Of what I don't know in you." "There's nothing of me that you don't know," he averred. "Isn't there?" She was infinitely wistful; avid of reassurance. Before he could answer she continued: "That night in the rain when I first saw you, under the flash, as I see you now--Ban, dear, how little you've changed, how wonderfully little, to the eye!--the instant I saw you, I trusted you." "Do you trust me now?" he asked for the delight of hearing her declare it. Instead he heard, incredulously, the doubt in her tone. "Do I? I want to--so much! I did then. At first sight." He set down the lamp. She could hear him breathing quick and stressfully. He did not speak. "At first sight," she repeated. "And--I think--I loved you from that minute. Though of course I didn't know. Not for days. Then, when I'd gone, I found what I'd never dreamed of; how much I could love." "And now?" he whispered. "Ah, more than then!" The low cry leapt from her lips. "A thousand times more." "But you don't trust me?" "Why don't I, Ban?" she pleaded. "What have you done? How have you changed?" He shook his head. "Yet you've given me your love. Do you trust yourself?" "Yes," she answered with a startling quietude of certainty. "In that I do. Absolutely." "Then I'll chance the rest. You're upset to-night, aren't you, Io? You've let your imagination run away with you." "This isn't a new thing to me. It began--I don't know when it began. Yes; I do. Before I ever knew or thought of you. Oh, long before! When I was no more than a baby." "Rede me your riddle, love," he said lightly.