“What about?” The question came sharp and quick.
He looked vaguely around the horizon.
“Oh, no, Ban!” she said. “Not this. You’ve got to know something besides cactuses and owls to write, these days. You’ve got to know men. And women,” she added, in a curious tone, with a suspicion of effort, even of jealousy in it.
“I’ve never cared much for people,” he said.
“It’s an acquired taste, I suppose for some of us. There’s something else.” She came slowly to a sitting posture and fixed her questioning, baffling eyes on his. “Ban, don’t you want to make a success in life?”
For a moment he did not answer. When he spoke, it was with apparent irrelevance to what she had said. “Once I went to a revival. A reformed tough was running it. About every three minutes he’d thrust out his hands and grab at the air and say, ‘Oh, brothers; don’t you yearn for Jesus?’”
“What has that to do with it?” questioned Io, surprised and impatient.
“Only that, somehow, the way you said ‘success in life’ made me think of him and his ‘yearn for Jesus.’”
“Errol Banneker,” said Io, amused in spite of her annoyance, “you are possessed of a familiar devil who betrays other people’s inner thoughts to you. Success is a species of religion to me, I suppose.”
“And you are making converts, like all true enthusiasts. Tell, tell me. What kind of success?”