Their association, flowering to the full
amidst the rush and turmoil of the city, was the antithesis to its
budding in the desert peace. To see the more of his mistress, Banneker
became an active participant in that class of social functions which get
themselves chronicled in the papers. Wise in her day and her protective
instinct of love, Io pointed out that the more he was identified with
her set, the less occasion would there be for comment upon their being
seen together. And they were seen together much.
She lunched with him at his downtown club, dined with him at Sherry's,
met him at The Retreat and was driven back home in his car, sometimes
with Archie Densmore for a third, not infrequently alone. Considerate
hostesses seated them next each other at dinners: it was deemed an
evidence of being "in the know" thus to accommodate them. The openness
of their intimacy went far to rob calumny of its sting. And Banneker's
ingrained circumspection of the man trained in the open, applied to _les
convenances_, was a protection in itself. Moreover, there was in his
devotion, conspicuous though it was, an air of chivalry, a breath of
fragrance from a world of higher romance, which rendered women in
particular charitable of judgment toward the pair.
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