“It’s too long for endurance.”

“Oh, you’ll do very well without me, Ban.”

“Shall I?  When am I to see you again before you go?”

Her raised eyebrows were like an affront.  “Are we to see each other again?  Of course, it would be polite of you to come to the train.”

There was a controlled and dangerous gravity in his next question.  “Io, have we quarreled?”

“How absurd!  Of course not.”

“Then—­”

“If you knew how I dislike fruitless explanations!”

He rose at once.  Io’s strong and beautiful hands, which had been lying in her lap, suddenly interlocked, clenching close together.  But her face disclosed nothing.  The virtuoso, who had been hopefully hovering in the offing, bore down to take the vacated chair.  He would have found the lovely young Mrs. Eyre distrait and irresponsive had he not been too happy babbling of his own triumphs to notice.

“Soon zey haf growed thin, zis crowd,” said the violinist, who took pride in his mastery of idiom.  “Zen, when zere remains but a small few, I play for you.  You sit zere, in ze leetle garden of flowers.”  He indicated the secluded seat near the stairway, where she had sat with Ban on the occasion of her first visit to The House With Three Eyes.  “Not too far; not too near.  From zere you shall not see; but you shall think you hear ze stars make for you harmonies of ze high places.”

Young Mackey, having arrived, commended himself to the condescending master by a meekly worshipful attitude.  Barely a score of people remained in the great room.  The word went about that they were in for one of those occasional treats which made The House With Three Eyes unique.  The fortunate lingerers disposed themselves about the room.  Io slipped into the nook designated for her.  Banneker was somewhere in the background; her veiled glance could not discover where.  The music began.

They played Tschaikowsky first, the tender and passionate “Melodie”; then a lilting measure from Debussy’s “Faun,” followed by a solemnly lovely Brahms arrangement devised by the virtuoso himself.  At the dying-out of the applause, the violinist addressed himself to the nook where Io was no more than a vague, faerie figure to his eyes, misty through interlaced bloom and leafage.

“Now, Madame, I play you somezing of a American.  Ver’ beautiful, it is.  Not for violin.  For voice, contralto.  I sing it to you—­on ze G-string, which weep when it sing; weep for lost dreams.  It is called ‘Illusion,’ ze song.”

He raised his bow, and at the first bar Io’s heart gave a quick, thick sob within her breast.  It was the music which Camilla Van Arsdale had played that night when winds and forest leaves murmured the overtones; when earth and heaven were hushed to hear.

“Oh, Ban!” cried Io’s spirit.

Noiseless and swift, Banneker, answering the call, bent over her.  She whispered, softly, passionately, her lips hardly stirring the melody-thrilled air.