... Well, don't decide now. Take your
time to it." He rose and went to the door. There he turned, flapping the
loose imitations in his hands.
"Banneker," he said chuckling, "aren't they really dam' good!" and
vanished.
In that moment Banneker felt a surge of the first real liking he had
ever known for his employer. Marrineal had been purely human for a
flash.
Nevertheless, in the first revulsion after the proprietor had left,
Banneker's unconquered independence rose within him, jealous and
clamant. He felt repressions, claims, interferences potentially closing
in upon his pen, also an undefined dread of the sharply revealed
overseer. That a force other than his own mind and convictions should
exert pressure, even if unsuccessful, upon his writings, was
intolerable. Better anything than that. The Mid-West Syndicate, he knew,
would leave him absolutely untrammeled. He would write the general
director at once.
In the act of beginning the letter, the thought struck and stunned him
that this would mean leaving New York. Going to live in a Middle-Western
city, a thousand miles outside of the orbit in which moved Io Eyre!
He left the letter unfinished, and the issue to the fates.
CHAPTER VI
Put to the direct question, as, for example, on the witness stand, Mr.
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