“Am I taking you in?”
“No: you’re taking in my cousin, Esther Forbes. But I’m on your left. Be nice to me.”
Others came in and joined them. Banneker, his inner brain a fiery whorl, though the outer convolutions which he used for social purposes remained quite under control, drifted about making himself agreeable and approving himself to his host as an asset of the highest value. At dinner, sprightly and mischievous Miss Forbes, who recalled their former meeting at Sherry’s, found him wholly delightful and frankly told him so. He talked little with Io; but he was conscious to his nerve-ends of the sweet warmth of her so near him. To her questions about his developing career he returned vague replies or generalizations.
“You’re not drinking anything,” she said, as the third course came on. “Have you renounced the devil and all his works?” There was an impalpable stress upon the “all.”
His answer, composed though it was in tone, quite satisfied her. “I wouldn’t dare touch drink to-night.”
After dinner there was faro bank. Banneker did not play. Io, after a run of indifferent luck, declared herself tired of the game and turned to him.
“Take me out somewhere where there is air to breathe.”
They stood together on the stone terrace, blown lightly upon by a mist-ladden breeze.
“It ought to be a great drive of rain, filling the world,” said Io in her voice of dreams. “The roar of waters above us and below, and the glorious sense of being in the grip of a resistless current.... We’re all in the grip of resistless currents. D’you believe that yet, Ban?”
“No.”