"Mr. Banneker, I intend to be the next governor of this State."

"I might quote a proverb on that point," returned the editor unpleasantly.

"Yes; and I might cap your cup-and-lip proverb with another as to the effect of money as a stimulus in a horse-race."

"I have no doubts as to your financial capacity."

"My organization is building up through the State. I've got the country newspapers in a friendly, not to say expectant, mood. There's just one man I'm afraid of."

"Judge Enderby?"

"Exactly."

"I should think he would be an admirable nominee."

"As an individual you are at liberty to hold such opinions as you please. As editor of The Patriot--"

"I am to support The Patriot candidate and owner. Did you send for me to tell me that, Mr. Marrineal? I'm not altogether an idiot, please remember."

"You are a friend of Judge Enderby."

"If I am, that is a personal, not a political matter. No matter how much I might prefer to see him the candidate of the party"--Banneker spoke with cold deliberation--"I should not stultify myself or the paper by supporting him against the paper's owner."

"That is satisfactory." Marrineal swallowed the affront without a gulp.

"To continue. If I am elected governor, nothing on earth can prevent my being the presidential nominee two years later."

Equally appalled and amused by the enormous egotism of the man thus suddenly revealed, Banneker studied him in silence.

"Nothing in the world," repeated the other. "I have the political game figured out to an exact science. I know how to shape my policies, how to get the money backing I need, how to handle the farmer and labor. It may be news to you to know that I now control eight of the leading farm journals of the country and half a dozen labor organs. However, this is beside the question. My point with you is this. With my election as governor, my chief interest in The Patriot ceases. The paper will have set me on the road; I'll do the rest. Reserving only the right to determine certain very broad policies, I purpose to turn over the control of The Patriot to you."

"To me!" said Banneker, thunderstruck.

"Provided I am elected governor," said Marrineal. "Which depends largely--yes, almost entirely--on the elimination of Judge Enderby."

"What are you asking me to do?" demanded Banneker, genuinely puzzled.

"Absolutely nothing. As my right-hand man on the paper, you are entitled to know my plans, particularly as they affect you. I can add that when I reach the White House"--this with sublime confidence--"the paper will be for sale and you may have the option on it."

Banneker's brain seemed filled with flashes of light, as he returned to his desk. He sat there, deep-slumped in his chair, thinking, planning, suspecting, plumbing for the depths of Marrineal's design, and above all filled with an elate ambition. Not that he believed for a moment in Marrineal's absurd and megalomaniacal visions of the presidency. But the governorship; that indeed was possible enough; and that would mean a free 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 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 kind of thing to hold its circulation; but it could be depended upon to be "right" when the pinch came. Marrineal would see to that.

Since the episode of the killed proof, Marrineal had pursued a hands-off policy with regard to the editorial page. The labor editorials suited him admirably. They were daily winning back to the paper the support of Marrineal's pet "common people" who had been alienated by its course in the strike, for McClintick and other leaders had been sedulously spreading the story of the rejected strikers' advertisement. But, it appeared, Marrineal's estimate of the public's memory was correct: "They never remember." Banneker's skillful and vehement preachments against Wall Street, money domination of the masses, and the like, went far to wipe out the inherent anti-labor record of the paper and its owner.

Hardly a day passed that some working-man's union or club did not pass resolutions of confidence and esteem for Tertius C. Marrineal and The Patriot. It amused Marrineal almost as much as it gratified him. As a political asset it was invaluable. His one cause of complaint against the editorial page was that it would not attack Judge Enderby, except on general political or economic principles. And the forte of The Patriot in attack did not consist in polite and amenable forensics. Its readers were accustomed to the methods of the prize-ring rather than the debating platform. However, Marrineal made up for his editorial writer's lukewarmness, by the vigor of his own attacks upon Enderby. For, by early summer, it became evident that the nomination (and probable election) lay between these two opponents. Enderby was organizing a strong campaign. So competent and unbiased an observer of political events as Russell Edmonds, now on The Sphere, believed that Marrineal would be beaten. Shrewd, notwithstanding his egotism, Marrineal entertained a growing dread of this outcome himself. Through roundabout channels, he let his chief editorial writer understand that, when the final onset was timed, The Patriot's editorial page would be expected to lead the charge with the "spear that knows no brother." Banneker would appreciate that his own interests, almost as much as his chief's, were committed to the overthrow of Willis Enderby.

It was not a happy time for the Editor of The Patriot.

Happiness promised for the near future, however. Wearied of chasing a phantom hope of health from spot to spot, the elder Mrs. Eyre had finally elected to settle down for the summer at her Westchester place.

For obvious reasons, Io did not wish Banneker to come there. But she would plan to see him in town. Only, they must be very discreet; perhaps even to the extent of having a third person dine with them, her half-brother Archie, or Esther Forbes. Any one, any time, anywhere, Banneker wrote back, provided only he could see her again!

The day that she came to town, having arranged to meet Banneker for dinner with Esther, fate struck from another and unexpected quarter.

Such was Banneker's appearance when he came forward to greet her that Io cried out involuntarily, asking if he were ill.

"_I_'m not," he answered briefly. Then, with a forced smile of appeal to the third member, "Do you mind, Esther, if I talk to Io on a private matter?"

"Go as near as you like," returned that understanding young person promptly. "I'm consumed with a desire to converse with Elsie Maitland, who is dining in that very farthest corner. Back in an hour."

"It's Camilla Van Arsdale," said Banneker as the girl left.

"You've heard from her?"

"From Mindle who looks after my shack there. He says she's very ill.

I've got to go out there at once."

"Oh, Ban!"

"I know, dearest, and after all these endless weeks of separation. But you wouldn't have me do otherwise. Would you?"

"Of course not," she said indignantly. "When do you start?"

"At midnight."

"And your work?"

"I'll send my stuff in by wire."