akes are usually different for men
and women. So now you know.... Well, if you don't, you've grown stupid.
And I don't want to talk about it any more. I want to talk about--about
The Patriot. I read it this morning while I was waiting; your editorial.
Ban"--she drew a derisive mouth--"I was shocked."

"What was it? Politics?" asked Banneker, who, turning out his editorials
several at a time, seldom bothered to recall on what particular day any
one was published. "You wouldn't be expected to like our politics."

"Not politics. It is about Harvey Wheelwright."

Banneker was amused. "The immortally popular Wheelwright. We're
serializing his new novel, 'Satiated with Sin,' in the Sunday edition.
My idea. It'll put on circulation where we most need it."

"Is that any reason why you should exploit him as if he were the
foremost living novelist?"

"Certainly. Besides, he is, in popularity."

"But, Ban; his stuff is awful! If this latest thing is like the earlier.
["Worse," murmured Banneker.] And you're writing about him as if he
were--well, Conrad and Wells rolled into one."

"He's better than that, for the kind of people that read him. It's
addressed to them, that editorial. All the stress is on his piety, his
popularity, his power to move men's minds; there isn't a word that even
touches on the domain of art or literary skill."

"It has that effect."

"Ah! That's my art," chuckled Banneker. "_That's_ literary skill, if you
choose!"

"Do you know what I call it? I call it treason."

His mind flashed to meet hers. She read comprehension in his changed
face and the shadow in her eyes, lambent and profound, deepened.

"Treason to the world that we two made for ourselves out there," she
pursued evenly.

"You shattered it."

"To the Undying Voices."

"You stilled them, for me."

"Oh, Ban! Not that!" A sudden, little sob wrenched at her throat. She
half thrust out a hand toward him, and withdrew it, to cup and hold her
chin in the old, thoughtful posture that plucked at his heart with
imperious memories. "Don't they sing for you any more?" begged Io,
wistful as a child forlorn for a dream of fairies dispelled.

"I wouldn't let them. They all sang of you."

She sighed, but about the tender corners of her lips crept the tremor of
a smile. Instantly she became serious again.

"If you still heard the Voices, you could never have written that
editorial.... What I hate about it is that it has charm; that it impar