“I can’t expect you to understand me, can I?  Especially as I don’t understand myself.  Don’t sulk, Ban, dearest.  You’re so un-pretty when you pout.”

He refused to accept the change to a lighter tone.  “I understand this, Io; that you have begun unaccountably to mistrust me.  That hurts.”

“I don’t want to hurt you.  I’d rather hurt myself; a thousand times rather.  Oh, I will marry you, of course, when the time comes!  And yet—­”

“Yet?”

“Isn’t it strange, that deep-seated misgiving!  I suppose it’s my woman’s dread of any change.  It’s been so perfect between us, Ban.”  Her speech dropped to its lowest breath of pure music: 

“’This test for love:—­in every kiss, sealed fast To feel the first kiss and forebode the last’—­

So it has been with us; hasn’t it, my lover?”

“So it shall always be,” he answered, low and deep.

Her eyes dreamed.  “How could any man feel what he put in those lines?” she murmured.

“Some woman taught him,” said Banneker.

She threw him a fairy kiss.  “Why haven’t we ‘The Voices’ here!  You should read to me....  Do you ever wish we were back in the desert?”

“We shall be, some day.”

She shuddered a little, involuntarily.  “There’s a sense of recall, isn’t there!  Do you still love it?”

“It’s the beginning of the Road to Happiness,” he said.  “The place where I first saw you.”

“You don’t care for many things, though, Ban.”

“Not many.  Only two, vitally.  You and the paper.”

She made a curious reply pregnant of meanings which were to come back upon him afterward.  “I shan’t be jealous of that.  Not as long as you’re true to it.  But I don’t think you care for The Patriot, for itself.”

“Oh, don’t I!”

“If you do, it’s only because it’s part of you; your voice; your power.  Because it belongs to you.  I wonder if you love me mostly for the same reason.”

“Say, the reverse reason.  Because I belong so entirely to you that nothing outside really matters except as it contributes to you.  Can’t you realize and believe?”

“No; I shouldn’t be jealous of the paper,” she mused, ignoring his appeal.  Then, with a sudden transition:  “I like your Russell Edmonds.  Am I wrong or is there a kind of nobility of mind in him?”

“Of mind and soul.  You would be the one to see it.

’.............the nobleness that lies
Sleeping but never dead in other men,
Will rise in majesty to meet thine own’”—­

he quoted, smiling into her eyes.

“Do you ever talk over your editorials with him?”

“Often.  He’s my main and only reliance, politically.”

“Only politically?  Does he ever comment on other editorials?  The one on Harvey Wheelwright, for instance?”

Banneker was faintly surprised.  “No.  Why should he?  Did you discuss that with him?”