"But it's always there. Isn't there
anything I can do?"
"Nothing. There's nothing anybody can do."
The blind woman hesitated. "But you care for her still, don't you, Ban?"
"Care! Oh, my God!" whispered Banneker.
"And she cares. I know she cared when she was here. Io isn't the kind of
woman to forget easily. She tried once, you know." Miss Van Arsdale
smiled wanly. "Why doesn't she ever say anything of you in her letters?"
"She does."
"Very little." (Io's letters, passing through Banneker's hands were
carefully censored, of necessity, to forefend any allusion to the
tragedy of Willis Enderby, often to the extent of being rewritten
complete. It now occurred to Banneker that he had perhaps overdone the
matter of keeping his own name out of them.) "Ban," she continued
wistfully, "you haven't quarreled, have you?"
"No, Miss Camilla. We haven't quarreled."
"Then _what_ is it, Ban? I don't want to pry; you know me well enough to
be sure of that. But if I could only know before the end comes that you
two--I wish I could read your face. It's a helpless thing, being blind."
This was as near a complaint as he had ever heard her utter.
"Io's a rich woman, Miss Camilla," he said desperately.
"What of it?"
"How could I ask her to marry a jobless, half-lunged derelict?"
"_Have_ you asked her?"
He was silent.
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