“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?”