"
"Do _you_ say that?" she answered.
"Oh, don't think that I complain. You've made life a living glory for
me. Yet"--his face grew wistful--"I suppose--I don't know how to say
it--I'm like the shepherd in the poem,
'Still nursing the unconquerable hope,
Still clutching the inviolable shade.'
Io, why do I always think in poetry, when I'm with you?"
"I want you always to," she said, which was a more than sufficient
answer.
Io had been back in Philadelphia several days, and had 'phoned Banneker
that she was coming over on the following Tuesday, when, having worked
at the office until early evening, he ran around the corner to Katie's
for dinner. At the big table "Bunny" Fitch of The Record was holding
forth.
Fitch was that invaluable type of the political hack-writer, a lackey of
the mind, instinctively subservient to his paper's slightest opinion,
hating what it hates, loving what it loves, with the servile adherence
of a medieval churchman. As The Record was bitter upon reform, its
proprietor having been sadly disillusioned in youth by a lofty but
abortive experiment in perfecting human nature from which he never
recovered, Bunny lost no opportunity to damn all reformers.
"Can't you imagine the dirty little snob," he was saying, as Banneker
entered, "creeping and fawning and cringing for their favors? Up for
membership at The Retreat.
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