Ask me
sometime when you're cruising as far as Coney Island."
Io sat silent, and with a set smile, listening to Herbert Cressey's
account of an election row in the district where he was volunteer
watcher. When the party broke up, she went home with Densmore without
giving Banneker the chance of a word with her. It seemed to him that
there was a mute plea for pardon in her face as she bade him good-night.
At noon next day she called him on the 'phone.
"Just to tell you that I'm coming as usual Saturday evening," she said.
"When do you leave on your cruise?" he asked.
"Not until next week. I'll tell you when I see you. Good-bye."
Never had Banneker seen Io in such difficult mood as she exhibited on
the Saturday. She had come early to The House With Three Eyes,
accompanied by Densmore who looked in just for one drink before going to
a much-touted boxing-match in Jersey. Through the evening she
deliberately avoided seeing Banneker alone for so much as the space of a
query put and answered, dividing her attention between an enraptured
master of the violin who had come after his concert, and an aged and
bewildered inventor who, in a long career of secluded toil, had never
beheld anything like this brilliant creature with her intelligent and
quickening interest in what he had to tell her.
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