Brilliantly, convincingly to his own mind, he began. It was all right; only the words in their eagerness to set forth the purity of his motives, the unimpeachable rectitude of his standards, became confused.

Somebody was plucking at his arm. Ives? All right? Ives was a good fellow, after all.... Yes: he'd go home--with Ives. Ives would understand.

All the way back to The House With Three Eyes he explained himself; any fair-minded man would see that he had done his best. Ives was fair-minded; he saw it. Ives was a man of judgment. Therefore, when he suggested bed, he must be right. Very weary, Banneker was. He felt very, very wretched about Enderby. He'd explain it all to Enderby in the morning--no: couldn't do that, though. Enderby was dead. Queer idea, that! What was it that violent-minded idiot, Pop Edmonds, had said? He'd settle with Pop in the morning. Now he'd go to sleep....

He woke to utter misery. In the first mail came the letter, now expected, from Io. It completed the catastrophe in which his every hope was swept away.

I have tried to make myself believe (she wrote) that you could not have Betrayed him; that you would not, at least, have let me, who loved you, be, unknowingly, the agent of his destruction. But the black record comes back to me. The Harvey Wheelwright editorial, which seemed so light a thing, then. The lie that beat Robert Laird. The editorial that you dared not print, after promising. All of one piece. How could I ever have trusted you!

Oh, Ban, Ban! When I think of what we have been to each other; how gladly, how proudly, I gave myself to you, to find you unfaithful! Is that the price of success? And unfaithful in such a way! If you had been untrue to me in the conventional sense, I think it would have been a small matter compared to this betrayal. That would have been a thing of the senses, a wound to the lesser part of our love. But this--Couldn't you see that our relation demanded more of faith, of fidelity, than marriage, to justify it and sustain it; more idealism, more truth, more loyalty to what we were to each other? And now this!

If it were I alone that you have betrayed, I could bear my own remorse; perhaps even think it retribution for what I have done. But how can I--and how can you--bear the remorse of the disaster that will fall upon Camilla Van Arsdale, your truest friend? What is there left to her, now that the man she loves is to be hounded out of public life by blackmailers? I have not told her. I have not been able to tell her.

Perhaps he will write her, himself. How can she bear it! I am going away, leaving a companion in charge of her.

Camilla Van Arsdale! One last drop of bitterness in the cup of suffering.

Neither she nor Io had, of course, learned of Enderby's death, and could not for several days, until the newspapers reached them. Banneker perceived clearly the thing that was laid upon him to do. He must go out to Manzanita and take the news to her. That was part of his punishment.

He sent a telegram to Mindle, his factotum on the ground.

Hold all newspapers from Miss C. until I get there, if you have to rob mails. E.B.

Without packing his things, without closing his house, without resigning his editorship, he took the next train for Manzanita. Io, coming East, and still unaware of the final tragedy, passed him, halfway.

While the choir was chanting, over the body of Willis Enderby, the solemn glory of Royce Melvin's funeral hymn, the script of which had been found attached to his last statement, Banneker, speeding westward, was working out, in agony of soul, a great and patient penance, for his own long observance, planning the secret and tireless ritual through which Camilla Van Arsdale should keep intact her pure and long delayed happiness while her life endured.

CHAPTER XX

A dun pony ambled along the pine-needle-carpeted trail leading through the forest toward Camilla Van Arsdale's camp, comfortably shaded against the ardent power of the January sun. Behind sounded a soft, rapid padding of hooves. The pony shied to the left with a violence which might have unseated a less practiced rider, as, with a wild whoop, Dutch Pete came by at full gallop. Pete had been to a dance at the Sick Coyote on the previous night which had imperceptibly merged itself into the present morning, and had there imbibed enough of the spirit of the occasion to last him his fifteen miles home to his ranch. Now he pulled up and waited for the slower rider to overtake him.

"Howdy, Ban!"

"Hello, Pete."

"How's the lady gettin' on?"

"Not too well."

"Can't see much of anythin', huh?"

"No: and never will again."

"Sho! Well, I don't figger out as I'd want to live long in that fix. How long does the doc give her, Ban?"

"Perhaps six months; perhaps a year. She isn't afraid to die; but she's hanging to life just as long as she can. She's a game one, Pete."

"And how long will you be with us, Ban?"

"Oh, I'm likely to be around quite a while yet."

Dutch Pete, thoroughly understanding, reflected that here was another game one. But he remarked only that he'd like to drop in on Miss K'miller next time he rode over, with a bit of sage honey that he'd saved out for her.

"She'll be glad to see you," returned the other. "Only, don't forget, Pete; not a word about anything except local stuff."

"Sure!" agreed Pete with that unquestioning acceptance of another's reasons for secrecy which marks the frontiersman. "Say, Ban," he added, "you ain't much of an advertisement for Manzanita as a health resort, yourself. Better have that doc stick his head in your mouth and look at your insides."

Banneker raised tired eyes and smiled. "Oh, I'm all right," he replied listlessly.

"Come to next Saturday's dance at the Coyote; that'll put dynamite in your blood," prescribed the other as he spurred his horse on.

Banneker had no need to turn the dun pony aside to the branch trail that curved to the door of his guest; the knowing animal took it by habitude, having traversed it daily for a long time. It was six months since Banneker had bought him: six months and a week since Willis Enderby had been buried. And the pony's rider had in his pocket a letter, of date only four days old, from Willis Enderby to Camilla Van Arsdale. It was dated from the Governor's Mansion, Albany, New York. Banneker had written it himself, the night before. He had also composed nearly a column of supposed Amalgamated Wire report, regarding the fight for and against Governor Enderby's reform measures, which he would read presently to Miss Van Arsdale from the dailies just received. As he dismounted, the clear music of her voice called:

"Any mail, Ban?"

"Yes. Letter from Albany."

"Let me open it myself," she cried jealously.

He delivered it into her hands: this was part of the ritual. She ran her fingers caressingly over it, as if to draw from it the hidden sweetness of her lover's strength, which must still be only half-expressed, because the words were to be translated through another's reading; then returned it to its real author.

"Read it slowly, Ban," she commanded softly.

Having completed the letter, his next process was to run through the papers, giving in full any news or editorials on State politics. This was a task demanding the greatest mental concentration and alertness, for he had built up a contemporary history out of his imagination, and must keep all the details congruous and logical. Several times, with that uncanny retentiveness of memory developed in the blind, she had all but caught him; but each time his adroitness saved the day. Later, while he was at work in the room which she had set aside for his daily writing, she would answer the letter on the typewriter, having taught herself to write by position and touch, and he would take her reply for posting. Her nurse and companion, an elderly woman with a natural aptitude for silence and discretion, was Banneker's partner in the secret. The third member of the conspiracy was the physician who came once a week from Angelica City because he himself was a musician and this slowly and courageously dying woman was Royce Melvin. Between them they hedged her about with the fiction that victoriously defied grief and defeated death.

Camilla Van Arsdale got up from her couch and walked with confident footsteps to the piano.

"Ban," she said, seating herself and letting her fingers run over the keys, "can't you substitute another word for 'muffled' in the third line? It comes on a high note--upper g--and I want a long, not a short vowel sound."

"How would 'silenced' do?" he offered, after studying the line.

"Beautifully. You're a most amiable poet! Ban, I think your verses are going to be more famous than my music."

"Never that," he denied. "It's the music that makes them."

"Have you heard from Mr. Gaines yet about the essays?"

"Yes. He's taking them. He wants to print two in each issue and call them 'Far Perspectives.'"

"Oh, good!" she cried. "But, Ban, fine as your work is, it seems a terrible waste of your powers to be out here. You ought to be in New York, helping the governor put through his projects."

"Well, you know, the doctor won't give me my release."

(Presently he must remember to have a coughing spell. He coughed hollowly and well, thanks to assiduous practice. This was part of the grim and loving comedy of deception: that he had been peremptorily ordered back to Manzanita on account of "weak lungs," with orders to live in his open shack until he had gained twenty pounds. He was gaining, but with well-considered slowness.)

"But when you can, you'll go back and help him, even if I'm not here to know about it, won't you?"

"Oh, yes: I'll go back to help him when I can," he promised, as heartily as if he had not made the same promise each time that the subject came up. There was still a good deal of the wistful child about the dying woman.