“Yes; that would be a change of the earth underfoot and the sky overhead, if one cared,” she mused.  “And I said they didn’t change.”

“Don’t they!” retorted Banneker bitterly.  “You are married.”

“I have been married,” she corrected, with an air of amiable rectification.  “It was a wise thing to do.  Everybody said so.  It didn’t last.  Nobody thought it would.  I didn’t really think so myself.”

“Then why in Heaven’s name—­”

“Oh, let’s not talk about it now.  Some other time, perhaps.  Say next time we meet; five or six months from now....  No; I won’t tease you any more, Ban.  It won’t be that.  It won’t be long.  I’ll tell you the truth:  I’d heard a lot about you and Betty Raleigh, and I got to know her and I hoped it would be a go.  I did; truly, Ban.  I owed you that chance of happiness.  I took mine, you see; only it wasn’t happiness that I gambled for.  Something else.  Safety.  The stakes are usually different for men and women.  So now you know....  Well, if you don’t, you’ve grown stupid.  And I don’t want to talk about it any more.  I want to talk about—­about The Patriot.  I read it this morning while I was waiting; your editorial.  Ban”—­she drew a derisive mouth—­“I was shocked.”

“What was it?  Politics?” asked Banneker, who, turning out his editorials several at a time, seldom bothered to recall on what particular day any one was published.  “You wouldn’t be expected to like our politics.”

“Not politics.  It is about Harvey Wheelwright.”

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.