ath for you to
travel," she said after a pause; "that you were going to do bigger
things here than you ever could do with The Patriot? I believe it's
going to be so, Ban; that what you are doing now is going to be your
true success."
"Success!" he cried. "Are you going to preach success to me? If ever
there was a word coined in hell--I'm sorry, Miss Camilla," he broke off,
mastering himself.
She groped her way to the piano, and ran her fingers over the keys.
"There is work, anyway," she said with sure serenity.
"Yes; there's work, thank God!"
Work enough there was for him, not only in his writing, for which he had
recovered the capacity after a long period of stunned inaction, but in
the constant and unwearied labor of love in building and rebuilding,
fortifying and extending, that precarious but still impregnable bulwark
of falsehood beneath whose protection Camilla Van Arsdale lived and was
happy and made the magic of her song. Illusion! Banneker wondered
whether any happiness were other than illusion, whether the illusion of
happiness were not better than any reality. But in the world of grim
fact which he had accepted for himself was no palliating mirage. Upon
him "the illusive eyes of hope" were closed.
While Banneker was practicing his elaborate deceptions, Miss Van Arsdale
had perpetrated a lesser one of her own, which she had not deemed it
wise to reveal to him in their conversation about Io. Some time before
that she had written to her former guest a letter tactfully designed to
lay a foundation for resolving the difficulty or misunderstanding
between the lovers. In the normal course of events this would have been
committed for mailing to Banneker, who would, of course, have
confiscated it. But, as it chanced, it was hardly off the typewriter
when Dutch Pete dropped in for a friendly call while Banneker was at the
village, and took the missive with him for mailing. It traveled widely,
amassed postmarks and forwarding addresses, and eventually came to its
final port.
Worn out with the hopeless quest of forgetfulness in far lands, Io Eyre
came back to New York. It was there that the long pursuit of her by
Camilla Van Arsdale's letter ended. Bewilderment darkened Io's mind as
she read, to be succeeded by an appalled conjecture; Camilla Van
Arsdale's mind had broken down under her griefs. What other hypothesis
could account for her writing of Willis Enderby as being still alive?
And of her having lett
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