moment of parting, she came to his arms, clung to him, gave
him her lips passionately, longingly; bade him write, for his letters
would be all that there was to keep life radiant for her....

Through some perverse kink in his mental processes, he found it
difficult to write to Io, in the succeeding weeks and months, during
which she devotedly accompanied the failing Mrs. Eyre from rest cure to
sanitarium, about his work on The Patriot. That interplay of interest
between them in his editorial plans and purposes, which had so
stimulated and inspired him, was checked. The mutual current had ceased
to flash; at least, so he felt. Had the wretched affair of his forfeited
promise in the matter of the strike announcement destroyed one bond
between them? Even were this true, there were other bonds, of the spirit
and therefore irrefragable, to hold her to him; thus he comforted his
anxious hopes.

Because their community of interest in his work had lapsed, Banneker
found the savor oozing out of his toil. Monotony sang its dispiriting
drone in his ears. He flung himself into polo with reawakened vim, and
roused the hopes of The Retreat for the coming season, until an unlucky
spill broke two ribs and dislocated a shoulder. Restless in the physical
idleness of his mending days, he took to drifting about in the whirls
and ripples and backwaters of the city life, out of which wanderings
grew a new series of the "Vagrancies," more quaint and delicate and
trenchant than the originals because done with a pen under perfected
mastery, without losing anything of the earlier simplicity and sympathy.
In this work, Banneker found relief; and in Io's delight in it, a
reflected joy that lent fresh impetus to his special genius. The Great
Gaines enthusiastically accepted the new sketches for his magazine.

Whatever ebbing of fervor from his daily task Banneker might feel, his
public was conscious of no change for the worse. Letters of
commendation, objection, denunciation, and hysteria, most convincing
evidence of an editor's sway over the public mind, increased weekly. So,
also, did the circulation of The Patriot, and its advertising revenue.
Its course in the garment strike had satisfied the heavy local
advertisers of its responsibility and repentance for sins past; they
testified, by material support, to their appreciation. Banneker's
strongly pro-labor editorials they read with the mental commentary that
probably The Patriot had to do that