misgivings as to a twenty-year-old girl crossing the continent alone had
been unavailing against Io's calm willfulness.

Well, she would go back and marry Del Eyre, and be comfortable ever
after. After all, liking and comprehension were a sounder foundation for
matrimony than the perishable glamour of an attraction like Holmesley's.
Any sensible person would know that. She wished that she had some older
and more experienced woman to talk it out with. Miss Van Arsdale, if
only she knew her a little better....

Camilla Van Arsdale, even on so casual an acquaintance, would have told
Io, reckoning with the slumbering fire in her eyes, and the sensitive
and passionate turn of the lips, but still more with the subtle and
significant emanation of a femininity as yet unawakened to itself, that
for her to marry on the pallid expectancies of mere liking would be to
invite disaster and challenge ruin.

Meantime Io wanted to rest and think.

Time enough for that was to be hers, it appeared. Her first night as a
guest had been spent in a semi-enclosed porch, to which every breeze
wafted the spicy and restful balm of the wet pines. Io's hot brain
cooled itself in that peace. Quite with a feeling of welcome she
accepted the windy downpour which came with the morning to keep her
indoors, as if it were a friendly and opportune jailer. Reaction from
the mental strain and the physical shock had set in. She wanted only, as
she expressed it to her hostess, to "laze" for a while.

"Then this is the ideal spot for you," Miss Van Arsdale answered her.
"I'm going to ride over to town."