that we up-to-date people don’t attain. But I’m at least intelligent enough to recognize it. You reckon her as a friend, don’t you?”
“Why, yes; I suppose so.”
“Do you suppose you’d ever come to reckon me as one?” she asked, half bantering, half wistful.
“There won’t be time. You’re running away.”
“Perhaps I might write you. I think I’d like to.”
“Would you?” he murmured. “Why?”
“You ought to be greatly flattered,” she reproved him. “Instead you shoot a ‘why’ at me. Well; because you’ve got something I haven’t got. And when I find anything new like that, I always try to get some of it for myself.”
“I don’t know what it could be, but—”
“Call it your philosophy of life. Your contentment. Or is it only detachment? That can’t last, you know.”
He turned to her, vaguely disturbed as by a threat. “Why not?”
“You’re too—well, distinctive. You’re too rare and beautiful a specimen. You’ll be grabbed.” She laughed softly.
“Who’ll grab me?”
“How should I know? Life, probably. Grab you and dry you up and put you in a case like the rest of us.”
“Perhaps that’s why I like to stay out here. At least I can be myself.”
“Is that your fondest ambition?”
However much he may have been startled by the swift stab, he gave no sign of hurt in his reply.
“Call it the line of least resistance. In any case, I shouldn’t like to be grabbed and dried up.”
“Most of us are grabbed and catalogued from our birth, and eventually dried up and set in our proper places.”
“Not you, certainly.”
“Because you haven’t seen me in my shell. That’s where I mostly live. I’ve broken out for a time.”
“Don’t you like it outside, Butterfly?” he queried with a hint of playful caress in his voice.
“I like that name for myself,” she returned quickly. “Though a butterfly couldn’t return to its chrysalis, no matter how much it wanted to, could it? But you may call me that, since we’re to be friends.”
“Then you do like it outside your shell.”
“It’s exhilarating. But I suppose I should find it too rough for my highly sensitized skin in the long run. … Are you going to write to me if I write to you?”
“What about? That Number Six came in making bad steam, and that a west-bound freight, running extra, was held up on the siding at Marchand for half a day?”
“Is that all you have to write about?”
Banneker bethought himself of the very private dossier in his office. “No; it isn’t.”
“You could write in a way all your own. Have you ever written anything for publication?”
“No. That is—well—I don’t really know.” He told her about Gardner and the description of the wreck.
“How did you happen to do that?” she asked curiously.
“Oh, I write a lot of things and put them away and forget them.”
“Show me,” she wheedled. “I’d love to see them.”
He shook his head. “They wouldn’t interest you.” The words were those of an excuse. But in the tone was finality.
“I don’t think you’re very responsive,” she complained. “I’m awfully interested in you and your affairs, and you won’t play back the least bit.”
They walked on in silence for a space. He had, she reflected, a most disconcerting trick of silence, of ignoring quite without embarrassment leads, which in her code imperatively called for return. Annoyance stirred within her, and the eternal feline which is a component part of the eternal feminine asserted itself.
“Perhaps,” she suggested, “you are afraid of me.”
“No; I’m not.”
“By that you mean ‘Why should I be’?”
“Something of the sort.”
“Didn’t Miss Van Arsdale warn you against me?”
“How did you know that?” he asked, staring.
“A solemn warning not to fall in love with me?” pursued the girl calmly.
He stopped short. “She told you that she had said something to me?”
“Don’t be idiotic! Of course she didn’t.”
“Then how did you know?” he persisted.
“How does one snake know what another snake will do?” she retorted. “Being of the same—”
“Wait a moment. I don’t like that word ‘snake’ in connection with Miss Van Arsdale.”
“Though you’re willing to accept it as applying to me. I believe you are trying to quarrel with me,” accused Io. “I only meant that, being a woman, I can make a guess at what another woman would do in any given conditions. And she did it!” she concluded in triumph.
“No; she didn’t. Not in so many words. But you’re very clever.”
“Say, rather, that you are very stupid,” was the disdainful retort. “So you’re not going to fall in love with me?”
“Of course not,” answered Banneker in the most cheerfully commonplace of tones.
Once embarked upon this primrose path, which is always an imperceptible but easy down-slope, Io went farther than she had intended. “Why not?” she challenged.
“Brass buttons,” said Banneker concisely.
She flushed angrily. “You can be rather a beast, can’t you!”
“A beast? Just for reminding you that the Atkinson and St. Philip station-agent at Manzanita does not include in his official duties that of presuming to fall in love with chance passengers who happen to be more or less in his care.”
“Very proper and official! Now,” added the girl in a different manner, “let’s stop talking nonsense, and do you tell me one thing honestly. Do you feel that it would be presumption?”
“To fall in love with you?”
“Leave that part of it out; I put my question stupidly. I’m really curious to know whether you feel any—any difference between your station and mine.”
“Do you?”
“Yes; I do,” she answered honestly, “when I think of it. But you make it very hard for me to remember it when I’m with you.”
“Well, I don’t,” he said. “I suppose I’m a socialist in all matters of that kind. Not that I’ve ever given much thought to them. You don’t have to out here.”
“No; you wouldn’t. I don’t know that you would have to anywhere. … Are we almost home?”
“Three minutes’ more walking. Tired?”
“Not a bit. You know,” she added, “I really would like it if you’d write me once in a while. There’s something here I’d like to keep a hold on. It’s tonic. I’ll make you write me.” She flashed a smile at him.
“How?”