“What shall you do now?”
“Wait my chance, load my pen, and shoot to kill.”
“Let me see the editorial before you print it.”
“All right, Miss Meddlesome. But you won’t let your ideas of fair play run away with you and betray me to the enemy? You’re a Laird man, aren’t you?”
Her voice fell to a caressing half-note. “I’m a Banneker woman—in everything. Won’t you ever remember that?”
“No. You’ll never be that. You’ll always be Io; yourself; remote and unattainable in the deeper sense.”
“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?”