Banneker was amused. "The immortally popular Wheelwright. We're serializing his new novel, 'Satiated with Sin,' in the Sunday edition.

My idea. It'll put on circulation where we most need it."

"Is that any reason why you should exploit him as if he were the foremost living novelist?"

"Certainly. Besides, he is, in popularity."

"But, Ban; his stuff is awful! If this latest thing is like the earlier.

["Worse," murmured Banneker.] And you're writing about him as if he were--well, Conrad and Wells rolled into one."

"He's better than that, for the kind of people that read him. It's addressed to them, that editorial. All the stress is on his piety, his popularity, his power to move men's minds; there isn't a word that even touches on the domain of art or literary skill."

"It has that effect."

"Ah! That's my art," chuckled Banneker. "_That's_ literary skill, if you choose!"

"Do you know what I call it? I call it treason."

His mind flashed to meet hers. She read comprehension in his changed face and the shadow in her eyes, lambent and profound, deepened.

"Treason to the world that we two made for ourselves out there," she pursued evenly.

"You shattered it."

"To the Undying Voices."

"You stilled them, for me."

"Oh, Ban! Not that!" A sudden, little sob wrenched at her throat. She half thrust out a hand toward him, and withdrew it, to cup and hold her chin in the old, thoughtful posture that plucked at his heart with imperious memories. "Don't they sing for you any more?" begged Io, wistful as a child forlorn for a dream of fairies dispelled.

"I wouldn't let them. They all sang of you."

She sighed, but about the tender corners of her lips crept the tremor of a smile. Instantly she became serious again.

"If you still heard the Voices, you could never have written that editorial.... What I hate about it is that it has charm; that it imparts charm to a--to a debasing thing."

"Oh, come, Io!" protested the victim of this criticism, more easily.

"Debasing? Why, Wheelwright is considered the most uplifting of all our literary morality-improvers."

Io amplified and concluded her critique briefly and viciously. "A slug!"

"No; seriously. I'm not sure that he doesn't inculcate a lot of good in his way. At least he's always on the side of the angels."

"What kind of angels? Tinsel seraphs with paint on their cheeks, playing rag-time harps out of tune! There's a sickly slaver of sentiment over everything he touches that would make any virtue nauseous."

"Don't you want a job as a literary critic Our Special Reviewer, Miss Io Wel--Mrs. Delavan Eyre," he concluded, in a tone from which the raillery had flattened out.

At that bald betrayal, Io's color waned slightly. She lifted her water-glass and sipped at it. When she spoke again it was as if an inner scene had been shifted.

"What did you come to New York for?"

"Success."

"As in all the fables. And you've found it. It was almost too easy, wasn't it?"

"Indeed, not. It was touch and go."

"Would you have come but for me?"

He stared at her, considering, wondering.

"Remember," she adjured him; "success was my prescription. Be flattering for once. Let me think that I'm responsible for the miracle."

"Perhaps. I couldn't stay out there--afterward. The loneliness...."

"I didn't want to leave you loneliness," she burst out passionately under her breath. "I wanted to leave you memory and ambition and the determination to succeed."

"For what?"

"Oh, no; no!" She answered the harsh thought subtending his query. "Not for myself. Not for any pride. I'm not cheap, Ban."

"No; you're not cheap."

"I would have kept my distance.... It was quite true what I said to you about Betty Raleigh. It was not success alone that I wanted for you; I wanted happiness, too. I owed you that--after my mistake."

He caught up the last word. "You've admitted to yourself, then, that it was a mistake?"

"I played the game," she retorted. "One can't always play right. But one can always play fair."

"Yes; I know your creed of sportsmanship. There are worse religions."

"Do you think I played fair with you, Ban? After that night on the river?"

He was mute.

"Do you know why I didn't kiss you good-bye in the station? Not really kiss you, I mean, as I did on the island?"

"No."

"Because, if I had, I should never have had the strength to go away."

She lifted her eyes to his. Her voice fell to a half whisper. "You understood, on the island?... What I meant?"

"Yes."

"But you didn't take me. I wonder. Ban, if it hadn't been for the light flashing in our eyes and giving us hope...?"

"How can I tell? I was dazed with the amazement and the glory of it--of you. But--yes. My God, yes! And then? Afterward?"

"Could there have been any afterward?" she questioned dreamily. "Would we not just have waited for the river to sweep us up and carry us away?

What other ending could there have been, so fitting?"