“I wouldn’t let them.  They all sang of you.”

She sighed, but about the tender corners of her lips crept the tremor of a smile.  Instantly she became serious again.

“If you still heard the Voices, you could never have written that editorial....  What I hate about it is that it has charm; that it imparts charm to a—­to a debasing thing.”

“Oh, come, Io!” protested the victim of this criticism, more easily.  “Debasing?  Why, Wheelwright is considered the most uplifting of all our literary morality-improvers.”

Io amplified and concluded her critique briefly and viciously.  “A slug!”

“No; seriously.  I’m not sure that he doesn’t inculcate a lot of good in his way.  At least he’s always on the side of the angels.”

“What kind of angels?  Tinsel seraphs with paint on their cheeks, playing rag-time harps out of tune!  There’s a sickly slaver of sentiment over everything he touches that would make any virtue nauseous.”

“Don’t you want a job as a literary critic Our Special Reviewer, Miss Io Wel—­Mrs. Delavan Eyre,” he concluded, in a tone from which the raillery had flattened out.

At that bald betrayal, Io’s color waned slightly.  She lifted her water-glass and sipped at it.  When she spoke again it was as if an inner scene had been shifted.

“What did you come to New York for?”

“Success.”

“As in all the fables.  And you’ve found it.  It was almost too easy, wasn’t it?”

“Indeed, not.  It was touch and go.”

“Would you have come but for me?”

He stared at her, considering, wondering.

“Remember,” she adjured him; “success was my prescription.  Be flattering for once.  Let me think that I’m responsible for the miracle.”

“Perhaps.  I couldn’t stay out there—­afterward.  The loneliness....”

“I didn’t want to leave you loneliness,” she burst out passionately under her breath.  “I wanted to leave you memory and ambition and the determination to succeed.”

“For what?”

“Oh, no; no!” She answered the harsh thought subtending his query.  “Not for myself.  Not for any pride.  I’m not cheap, Ban.”

“No; you’re not cheap.”

“I would have kept my distance....  It was quite true what I said to you about Betty Raleigh.  It was not success alone that I wanted for you; I wanted happiness, too.  I owed you that—­after my mistake.”

He caught up the last word.  “You’ve admitted to yourself, then, that it was a mistake?”

“I played the game,” she retorted.  “One can’t always play right.  But one can always play fair.”

“Yes; I know your creed of sportsmanship.  There are worse religions.”

“Do you think I played fair with you, Ban?  After that night on the river?”

He was mute.

“Do you know why I didn’t kiss you good-bye in the station?  Not really kiss you, I mean, as I did on the island?”