“You try so hard to keep the sadness out of your voice when you speak of her,” said Camilla sorrowfully. “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.