He waited.
As time passed, Banneker's editorial and personal involvements grew more
complex. At what moment might a pressure from above close down on his
pen, and with what demand? How should he act in the crisis thus forced,
at Marrineal's slow pleasure? Take Edmonds's Gordian recourse; resign?
But he was on the verge of debt. His investments had gone badly; he
prided himself on the thought that it was partly through his own
immovable uprightness. Now, this threat to his badly needed percentages!
Surely The Patriot ought to be making a greater profit than it showed,
on its steadily waxing circulation. Why had he ever let himself be
wrenched from his first and impregnable system of a straight payment on
increase of circulation? Would it be possible to force Marrineal back
into that agreement? No income was too great, surely, to recompense for
such trouble of soul as The Patriot inflicted upon its editorial
mouthpiece.... Through the murk of thoughts shot, golden-rayed, the
vision of Io.
No world could be other than glorious in which she lived and loved him
and was his.
CHAPTER XI
Sheltered beneath the powerful pen of Banneker, his idyll, fulfilled,
lengthened out over radiant months. Io was to him all that dreams had
ever promised or portrayed.
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