system of a straight payment on
increase of circulation? Would it be possible to force Marrineal back
into that agreement? No income was too great, surely, to recompense for
such trouble of soul as The Patriot inflicted upon its editorial
mouthpiece.... Through the murk of thoughts shot, golden-rayed, the
vision of Io.

No world could be other than glorious in which she lived and loved him
and was his.

CHAPTER XI

Sheltered beneath the powerful pen of Banneker, his idyll, fulfilled,
lengthened out over radiant months. Io was to him all that dreams had
ever promised or portrayed. Their association, flowering to the full
amidst the rush and turmoil of the city, was the antithesis to its
budding in the desert peace. To see the more of his mistress, Banneker
became an active participant in that class of social functions which get
themselves chronicled in the papers. Wise in her day and her protective
instinct of love, Io pointed out that the more he was identified with
her set, the less occasion would there be for comment upon their being
seen together. And they were seen together much.

She lunched with him at his downtown club, dined with him at Sherry's,
met him at The Retreat and was driven back home in his car, sometimes
with Archie Densmore for a third, not infrequently alone. Considerate
hostesses seated them next each other at dinners: it was deemed an
evidence of being "in the know" thus to accommodate them. The openness
of their intimacy went far to rob calumny of its sting. And Banneker's
ingrained circumspection of the man trained in the open, applied to _les
convenances_, was a protection in itself. Moreover, there was in his
devotion, conspicuous though it was, an air of chivalry, a breath of
fragrance from a world of higher romance, which rendered women in
particular charitable of judgment toward the pair.

Sometimes in the late afternoon Banneker's private numbered telephone
rang, and an impersonal voice delivered a formal message. And that
evening Banneker (called out of town, no matter how pressing an
engagement he might have had) sat in The House With Three Eyes, now
darkened of vision, thrilling and longing for her step in the dim side
passage. There was risk of disaster. But Io willed to take it; was proud
to take it for her lover.

Immersed in a happiness and a hope which vivified every motion of his
life, Banneker was nevertheless under a continuous strain of
watchfulness; the _qui v