One gets used to being an air-plant without roots."
"Yet you wouldn't have fitted out this shack," she pointed out shrewdly,
"unless you had the instincts of home."
"That's true enough. Fortunately it's the kind of home I can take along
when they transfer me."
Io went to the door and looked afar on the radiant splendor of the
desert, and, nearer, into the cool peace of the forest.
"But you can't take all this," she reminded him.
"No. I can't take this."
"Shall you miss it?"
A shadow fell upon his face. "I'd miss something--I don't know what it
is--that no other place has ever given me. Why do you talk as if I were
going away from it? I'm not."
"Oh, yes; you are," she laughed softly. "It is so written. I'm a
seeress." She turned from the door and threw herself into a chair.
"What will take me?"
"Something inside you. Something unawakened. 'Something lost beyond the
ranges.' You'll know, and you'll obey it."
"Shall I ever come back, O seeress?"
At the question her eyes grew dreamy and distant. Her voice when she
spoke sank to a low-pitched monotone.
"Yes, you'll come back. Sometime.... So shall I ... not for years ...
but--" She jumped to her feet. "What kind of rubbish am I talking?" she
cried with forced merriment.
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