“Treason to the world that we two made for ourselves out there,” she pursued evenly.
“You shattered it.”
“To the Undying Voices.”
“You stilled them, for me.”
“Oh, Ban! Not that!” A sudden, little sob wrenched at her throat. She half thrust out a hand toward him, and withdrew it, to cup and hold her chin in the old, thoughtful posture that plucked at his heart with imperious memories. “Don’t they sing for you any more?” begged Io, wistful as a child forlorn for a dream of fairies dispelled.
“I wouldn’t let them. They all sang of you.”
She sighed, but about the tender corners of her lips crept the tremor of a smile. Instantly she became serious again.
“If you still heard the Voices, you could never have written that editorial.... What I hate about it is that it has charm; that it imparts charm to a—to a debasing thing.”
“Oh, come, Io!” protested the victim of this criticism, more easily. “Debasing? Why, Wheelwright is considered the most uplifting of all our literary morality-improvers.”
Io amplified and concluded her critique briefly and viciously. “A slug!”