"Are you really going, Io?"

"Certainly. Why shouldn't I?"

"Say that, for one reason"--he smiled faintly, but resolutely--"The Patriot needs your guiding inspiration."

"All The Patriot's troubles are over. It's plain sailing now."

"What of The Patriot's editor?"

"Quite able to take care of himself."

Into his voice there suffused the first ring of anger that she had ever heard from him; cold and formidable. "That won't do, Io. Why?"

"Because I choose."

"A child's answer. Why?"

"Do you want to be flattered?" She raised to his, eyes that danced with an impish and perverse light. "Call it escape, if you wish."

"From me?"

"Or from myself. Wouldn't you like to think that I'm afraid of you?"

"I shouldn't like to think that you're afraid of anything."

"I'm not." But her tone was that of the defiance which seeks to encourage itself.

"I'd call it a desertion," he said steadily.

"Oh, no! You're secure. You need nothing but what you've got. Power, reputation, position, success. What more can heart desire?" she taunted.

"You."

She quivered under the blunt word, but rallied to say lightly: "Six months isn't long. Though I may stretch it to a year."

"It's too long for endurance."

"Oh, you'll do very well without me, Ban."

"Shall I? When am I to see you again before you go?"

Her raised eyebrows were like an affront. "Are we to see each other again? Of course, it would be polite of you to come to the train."

There was a controlled and dangerous gravity in his next question. "Io, have we quarreled?"

"How absurd! Of course not."

"Then--"

"If you knew how I dislike fruitless explanations!"

He rose at once. Io's strong and beautiful hands, which had been lying in her lap, suddenly interlocked, clenching close together. But her face disclosed nothing. The virtuoso, who had been hopefully hovering in the offing, bore down to take the vacated chair. He would have found the lovely young Mrs. Eyre distrait and irresponsive had he not been too happy babbling of his own triumphs to notice.

"Soon zey haf growed thin, zis crowd," said the violinist, who took pride in his mastery of idiom. "Zen, when zere remains but a small few, I play for you. You sit _zere_, in ze leetle garden of flowers." He indicated the secluded seat near the stairway, where she had sat with Ban on the occasion of her first visit to The House With Three Eyes.

"Not too far; not too near. From zere you shall not see; but you shall think you hear ze stars make for you harmonies of ze high places."

Young Mackey, having arrived, commended himself to the condescending master by a meekly worshipful attitude. Barely a score of people remained in the great room. The word went about that they were in for one of those occasional treats which made The House With Three Eyes unique. The fortunate lingerers disposed themselves about the room. Io slipped into the nook designated for her. Banneker was somewhere in the background; her veiled glance could not discover where. The music began.

They played Tschaikowsky first, the tender and passionate "Melodie"; then a lilting measure from Debussy's "Faun," followed by a solemnly lovely Brahms arrangement devised by the virtuoso himself. At the dying-out of the applause, the violinist addressed himself to the nook where Io was no more than a vague, faerie figure to his eyes, misty through interlaced bloom and leafage.

"Now, Madame, I play you somezing of a American. Ver' beautiful, it is.

Not for violin. For voice, contralto. I sing it to you--on ze G-string, which weep when it sing; weep for lost dreams. It is called 'Illusion,'

ze song."

He raised his bow, and at the first bar Io's heart gave a quick, thick sob within her breast. It was the music which Camilla Van Arsdale had played that night when winds and forest leaves murmured the overtones; when earth and heaven were hushed to hear.

"Oh, Ban!" cried Io's spirit.

Noiseless and swift, Banneker, answering the call, bent over her. She whispered, softly, passionately, her lips hardly stirring the melody-thrilled air.

"How could I hurt you so! I'm going because I must; because I daren't stay. You can understand, Ban!"

The music died. "Yes," said Banneker. Then, "Don't go, Io!"

"I must. I'll--I'll see you before. When we're ourselves. We can't talk now. Not with this terrible music in our blood."

She rose and went forward to thank the player with such a light in her eyes and such a fervor in her words that he mentally added another to his list of conquests.

The party broke up. After that magic music, people wanted to be out of the light and the stir; to carry its pure passion forth into the dark places, to cherish and dream it over again.... Banneker sat before the broad fireplace in the laxity of a still grief. Io was going away from him. For a six-month. For a year. For an eternity. Going away from him, bearing his whole heart with her, as she had left him after the night on the river, left him to the searing memory of that mad, sweet cleavage of her lips to his, the passionate offer of her awakened womanhood in uttermost surrender of life at the roaring gates of death....

Footsteps, light, firm, unhesitant, approached across the broad floor from the hallway. Banneker sat rigid, incredulous, afraid to stir, as the sleeper fears to break the spell of a tenuous and lovely dream, until Io's voice spoke his name. He would have jumped to his feet, but the strong pressure of her hands on his shoulders restrained him.

"No. Stay as you are."

"I thought you had gone," he said thickly.

A great log toppled in the fireplace, showering its sparks in prodigal display.

"Do you remember our fire, on the river-bank?" said the voice of the girl, Io, across the years.

"While I live."

"Just you and I. Man and woman. Alone in the world. Sometimes I think it has always been so with us."

"We have no world of our own, Io," he said sadly.

"Heresy, Ban; heresy! Of course we have. An inner world. If we could forget--everything outside."