The exile, who had spent her years weaving exquisite music from the rhythm of desert winds and the overtones of the forest silence, looked about her, over the long, yellow-gray stretches pricked out with hints of brightness, to the peaceful refuge of the pines, and again to the naked and impudent meanness of the town. Across to her ears, borne on the air heavy with rain still unshed, came the rollicking, ragging jangle of the piano at the Sick Coyote. "Aren't there people to write about there?" she said. "Tragedies and comedies and the human drama? Barrie found it in a duller place." "Not until he had seen the world first," he retorted quickly. "And I'm not a Barrie.... I can't stay here, Miss Camilla." "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.