ee hand for Banneker for the term. What might he not do with The
Patriot in that time!... An insistent and obtrusive disturbance to his
profound cogitation troubled him. What was it that seemed to be setting
forth a claim to divide his attention? Ah, the telephone. He thrust it
aside, but it would not be silenced. Well ... what.... The discreet
voice of his man said that a telegram had come for him. All right (with
impatience); read it over the wire. The message, thus delivered in
mechanical tones, struck from his mind the lesser considerations which a
moment before had glowed with such shifting and troublous glory.

D. died this morning. Will write. I.

CHAPTER XVII

Work, incessant and of savage ardor, now filled Banneker's life. Once
more he immersed himself in it as assuagement to the emptiness of long
days and the yearning of longer nights. For, in the three months since
Delavan Eyre's death, Banneker had seen Io but once, and then very
briefly. Instead of subduing her loveliness, the mourning garb enhanced
and enriched it, like a jet setting to a glowing jewel. More
irresistibly than ever she was

"............ that Lady Beauty in whose praise
The voice and hand shake still"--

but there was something about her withdrawn, aloof of spirit, which he
dared not override or even challenge. She spoke briefly of Eyre, without
any pretense of great sorrow, dwelling with a kindled eye on that which
she had found admirable in him; his high and steadfast courage through
atrocious suffering until darkness settled down on his mind. Her own
plans were definite; she was going away with the elder Mrs. Eyre to a
rest resort. Of The Patriot and its progress she talked with interest,
but her questions were general and did not touch upon the matter of the
surrendered editorial. Was she purposely avoiding it or had it passed
from her mind in the stress of more personal events? Banneker would have
liked to know, but deemed it better not to ask. Once he tried to elicit
from her some indication of when she would marry him; but from this
decision she exhibited a covert and inexplicable shrinking. This he
might attribute, if he chose, to that innate and sound formalism which
would always lead her to observe the rules of the game; if from no
special respect for them as such, then out of deference to the
prejudices of others. Nevertheless, he experienced a gnawing
uncertainty, amounting to a half-confessed dread.

Yet, at the