"I didn't know you were to be here, Mrs. Eyre."

"I knew that you were," she retorted. "And I'm not Mrs. Eyre, please.

I'm Io."

He shook his head. "That was in another world."

"Oh, Ban, Ban!" she said. Her lips seemed to cherish the name that they gave forth so softly. "Don't be a silly Ban. It's the same world, only older; a million years older, I think.... I came here only because you were coming. Are you a million years older, Ban?"

"Unfair," he said hoarsely.

"I'm never unfair. I play the game." Her little, firm chin went up defiantly. Yes: she was more lovely and vivid and desirable than in the other days. Or was it only the unstifled yearning in his heart that made her seem so? "Have you missed me?" she asked simply.

He made no answer.

"I've missed you." She walked over to the window and stood looking out into the soft and breathing murk of the night. When she came back to him, her manner had changed. "Fancy finding you here of all places!" she said gayly.

"It isn't such a bad place to be," he said, relieved to meet her on the new ground.

"It's a goal," she declared. "Half of the aspiring gilded youth of the city would give their eye-teeth to make it. How did you manage?"

"I didn't manage. It was managed for me. Old Poultney Masters put me in."

"Well, don't scowl at me! For a reporter, you know, it's rather an achievement to get into The Retreat."

"I suppose so. Though I'm not a reporter now."

"Well, for any newspaper man. What are you, by the way?"

"A sort of all-round experimental editor."

"I hadn't heard of that," said Io, with a quickness which apprised him that she had been seeking information about him.

"Nobody has. It's only just happened."

"And I'm the first to know of it? That's as it should be," she asserted calmly. "You shall tell me all about it at dinner."

"Am I taking you in?"

"No: you're taking in my cousin, Esther Forbes. But I'm on your left. Be nice to me."

Others came in and joined them. Banneker, his inner brain a fiery whorl, though the outer convolutions which he used for social purposes remained quite under control, drifted about making himself agreeable and approving himself to his host as an asset of the highest value. At dinner, sprightly and mischievous Miss Forbes, who recalled their former meeting at Sherry's, found him wholly delightful and frankly told him so. He talked little with Io; but he was conscious to his nerve-ends of the sweet warmth of her so near him. To her questions about his developing career he returned vague replies or generalizations.

"You're not drinking anything," she said, as the third course came on. "Have you renounced the devil and all his works?" There was an impalpable stress upon the "all."

His answer, composed though it was in tone, quite satisfied her. "I wouldn't dare touch drink to-night."

After dinner there was faro bank. Banneker did not play. Io, after a run of indifferent luck, declared herself tired of the game and turned to him.

"Take me out somewhere where there is air to breathe."

They stood together on the stone terrace, blown lightly upon by a mist-ladden breeze.

"It ought to be a great drive of rain, filling the world," said Io in her voice of dreams. "The roar of waters above us and below, and the glorious sense of being in the grip of a resistless current.... We're all in the grip of resistless currents. D'you believe that yet, Ban?"

"No."

"Skeptic! You want to work out your own fate. You 'strive to see, to choose your path.' Well, you've climbed. Is it success. Ban?"

"It will be."

"And have you reached the Mountains of Fulfillment?"

He shook his head. "One never does, climbing alone."

"Has it been alone, Ban?"

"Yes."

"Always?"

"Always."

"So it has been for me--really. No," she added swiftly; "don't ask me questions. Not now. I want to hear more of your new venture."

He outlined his plan and hopes for The Patriot.

"It's good," she said gravely. "It's power, and so it's danger. But it's good.... Are we friends, Ban?"

"How can we be!"

"How can we not be! You've tried to drop me out of your life. Oh, I know, because I know you--better than you think. You'll never drop me out of your life again," she murmured with confident wistfulness.

"Never, Ban.... Let's go in."

Not until she came to bid him good-night, with a lingering handclasp, her palm cleaving to his like the reluctant severance of lips, did she tell him that she was going away almost immediately. "But I had to make sure first that you were really alive, and still Ban," she said.

It was many months before he saw her again.

PART III

FULFILLMENT

CHAPTER I