run away to marry the future Duke of Carfax, partly through the charm
which a reckless, headlong, and romantic personality imposed upon her,
but largely for the excitement of a reckless, headlong, and romantic
escapade. The tragic interposition of the wreck seemed to her present
consciousness, cooled and sobered by the spacious peace of the desert,
to have been providential.

Despite her disclaimer made to Banneker she felt, deep within the placid
acceptances of subconsciousness, that the destruction of a train was not
too much for a considerate Providence to undertake on behalf of her
petted and important self. She clearly realized that she had had a
narrow escape from Holmesley; that his attraction for her was transient
and unsubstantial, a surface magnetism without real value or promise.

In her revulsion of feeling she thought affectionately of Delavan Eyre.
There lay the safe basis of habitude, common interests, settled liking.
True, he bored her at times with his unimpeachable good-nature, his easy
self-assurance that everything was and always would be "all right," and
nothing "worth bothering over."

If he knew of her escapade, that would at least shake him out of his
soft and well-lined rut. Indeed, Io was frank enough with herself to
admit that a perverse desire to explode a bomb under her imperturbable
and too-assured suitor had been an element in her projected elopement.
Never would that bomb explode. It would not even fizzle enough to alarm
Eyre or her family. For not a soul knew of the frustrated scheme, except
Holmesley and the reliable friend in Paradiso whom she was to visit; not
her father, Sims Welland, traveling in Europe on business, nor her aunt,
Mrs. Thatcher Forbes, in whose charge she had been left. Ostensibly she
had been going to visit the Westerleys, that was all: Mrs. Forbes's