“But to have to endure this atmosphere of secrecy, of stealth, of danger to you,” he fretted.  “You could get your divorce.”

“No; I can’t.  You don’t understand.”

“Perhaps I do understand,” he said gently.

“About Del?” She drew a quick breath.  “How could you?”

“Wholly through an accident.  A medical man, a slimy little reptile, surprised his secret and inadvertently passed it on.”

She leaned forward to him from her corner of the settee, all courage and truth.  “I’m glad that you know, though I couldn’t tell you, myself.  You’ll see now that I couldn’t leave him to face it alone.”

“No.  You couldn’t.  If you did, it wouldn’t be Io.”

“Ah, and I love you for that, too,” she whispered, her voice and eyes one caress to him.  “I wonder how I ever made myself believe that I could get over loving you!  Now, I’ve got to pay for my mistake.  Ban, do you remember the ‘Babbling Babson’?  The imbecile who saw me from the train that day?”

“I remember every smallest thing in any way connected with you.”

“I love to hear you say that.  It makes up for the bad times, in between.  The Babbler has turned up.  He’s been living abroad for a few years.  I saw him at a tea last week.”

“Did he say anything?”

“Yes.  He tried to be coy and facetious.  I snubbed him soundly.  Perhaps it wasn’t wise.”

“Why shouldn’t it be?”

“Well he used to have the reputation of writing on the sly for The Searchlight.”

“That sewer-sheet!  You don’t think he’d dare do anything of the sort about us?  Why, what would he have to go on?”

“What does The Searchlight have to go on in most of its lies, and hints, and innuendoes?”

“But, Io, even if it did publish—­”

“It mustn’t,” she said.  “Ban, if it did—­it would make it impossible for us to go on as we have been.  Don’t you see that it would?”

He turned sallow under his ruddy skin.  “Then I’ll stop it, one way or another.  I’ll put the fear of God into that filthy old worm that runs the blackmail shop.  The first thing is to find out, though, whether there’s anything in it.  I did hear a hint....”  He lost himself in musings, trying to recall an occult remark which the obsequious Ely Ives had made to him sometime before.  “And I know where I can do it,” he ended.

To go to Ives for anything was heartily distasteful to him.  But this was a necessity.  He cautiously questioned the unofficial factotum of his employer.  Had Ives heard anything of a projected attack on him in The Searchlight?  Why, yes; Ives had (naturally, since it was he and not Babson who had furnished the material).  In fact, he had an underground wire into the office of that weekly of spice and scurrility which might be tapped to oblige a friend.

Banneker winced at the characterization, but confessed that he would be appreciative of any information.  In three days a galley proof of the paragraph was in his hands.  It confirmed his angriest fears.  Publication of it would smear Io’s name with scandal, and, by consequence, direct the leering gaze of the world upon their love.