man; nothing that touches
_my_ man is alien to my interests.'"

He laughed. But there was a note of gratitude in his voice, almost
humble, as he said: "You're the only woman in the world, Io, who can
quote the classics and not seem a prig."

"That's because I'm beautiful," she retorted impudently. "_Tell_ me I'm
beautiful, Ban!"

"You're the loveliest witch in the world," he cried.

"So much for flattery. Now--politics."

He recounted the Laird charges.

"No; that wasn't fair," she agreed. "It was most unfair. But I don't
believe Bob Laird knew the whole story. Did you ask him?"

"Ask him? I certainly did not. You don't understand much about politics,
dearest."

"I was thinking of it from the point of view of the newspaper. If you're
going to answer him in The Patriot, I should think you'd want to know
just what his basis was. Besides, if he's wrong, I believe he'd take it
back."

"After all the damage has been done. He won't get the chance."
Banneker's jaw set firm.

"What shall you do now?"

"Wait my chance, load my pen, and shoot to kill."

"Let me see the editorial before you print it."

"All right, Miss Meddlesome. But you won't let your ideas of fair play
run away with you and betray me to the enemy? You're a Laird man, aren't
you?"

Her voice fell to a caressing half-note. "I'm a Banneker woman--in
everything. Won't you ever remember that?"

"No. You'll never be that. You'll always be Io; yourself; remote and
unattainable in the deeper sense."

"Do _you_ say that?" she answered.

"Oh, don't think that I complain. You've made life a living glory for
me. Yet"--his face grew wistful--"I suppose--I don't know how to say
it--I'm like the shepherd in the poem,

'Still nursing the unconquerable hope,
Still clutching the inviolable shade.'

Io, why do I always think in poetry, when I'm with you?"

"I want you always to," she said, which was a more than sufficient
answer.

Io had been back in Philadelphia several days, and had 'phoned Banneker
that she was coming over on the following Tuesday, when, having worked
at the office until early evening, he ran around the corner to Katie's
for dinner. At the big table "Bunny" Fitch of The Record was holding
forth.

Fitch was that invaluable type of the political hack-writer, a lackey of
the mind, instinctively subservient to his paper's slightest opinion,
hating what it hates, loving what it loves, with the servile adherence
of a medieval churchma