sdale and Willis Enderby,
she would resistlessly follow the impulse born and matured of her own
passion. Had she not once before denied love ... and to what end of
suffering and bitter enlightenment and long waiting not yet ended! Yes;
she would send for Willis Enderby.

Thus, with the insight of love, he read the heart of the loved one.
Self-interest lifted its specious voice now, in contravention. If she
did send, and if Judge Enderby went to Camilla Van Arsdale, as Banneker
knew surely that he would, and if Ely Ives's spies discovered it, the
way was made plain and peaceful for Banneker. For, in that case, the
blunderbuss of blackmail would be held to Enderby's head: he must,
perforce, retire from the race on whatever pretext he might devise,
under threat of a scandal which, in any case, would drive him out of
public life. Marrineal would be nominated, probably elected; control of
The Patriot would pass into Banneker's hands; The Searchlight would thus
be held at bay until he and Io were married, for he could not really
doubt that she would marry him, even though there lay between them an
unexplained doubt and a seeming betrayal; and he could remould the
distorted and debased policies of The Patriot to his heart's desire of
an honest newspaper fearlessly presenting and supporting truth as he saw
it.

All this at no price of treachery; merely by leaving matters which were,
in fact, no concern of his, to the arbitrament of whatever fates might
concern themselves with such troublous matters; it was just a matter of
minding his own business and assuming that Io Eyre would do likewise. So
argued self-interest, plausible, persuasive. He went to bed with the
argument still unsettled, and, because it seethed in his mind, reached
out to his reading-stand to cool his brain with the limpid philosophies
of Stevenson's "Virginibus Puerisque."

"The cruellest lies are often told in silence," he read--the very
letters of the words seemed to scorch his eyes with prophetic fires. "A
man may have sat in a room for hours and not opened his teeth and yet
come out of that room a disloyal friend or a vile calumniator. And how
many loves have perished, because from--"

Banneker sprang from his bed, shaking. He dressed himself, consulted his
watch, wrote a brief, urgent line to Io, after 'phoning for a taxi;
carried it to the station himself, assured, though only by a few
minutes' margin, of getting it into the latest Western mail, retu