neker sat long over his cooling coffee. Through haunted nights he had
fought maddening memories of Io's shadowed eyes, of the exhalant,
irresistible femininity of her, of the pulses of her heart against his
on that wild and wonderful night in the flood; and he had won to an
armed peace, in which the outposts of his spirit were ever on guard
against the recurrent thoughts of her.

Now, at the bitter music of her name on the lips of a gossiping and
frivolous girl, the barriers had given away. In eagerness and
self-contempt he surrendered to the vision. Go to an afternoon tea to
see and speak with her again? He would, in that awakened mood, have
walked across the continent, only to be in her presence, to feel himself
once more within the radius of that inexorable charm.

CHAPTER VII

"Katie's" sits, sedate and serviceable, on a narrow side street so near
to Park Row that the big table in the rear rattles its dishes when the
presses begin their seismic rumblings, in the daily effort to shake the
world. Here gather the pick and choice of New York journalism, while
still on duty, to eat and drink and discuss the inner news of things
which is so often much more significant than the published version;
haply to win or lose a few swiftly earned dollars at pass-three hearts.
It is the unofficial press club of Newspaper Row.

Said McHale of The Sphere, who, having been stuck with the queen of
spades--that most unlucky thirteener--twice in succession, was retiring
on his losses, to Mallory of The Ledger who had just come in:

"I hear you've got a sucking genius at your shop."

"If you mean Banneker, he's weaned," replied the assistant city editor
of The Ledger. "He goes on space next week."

"Does he, though! Quick work, eh?"

"A record for the office. He's been on the staff less than a year."

"Is he really such a wonder?" asked Glidden of The Monitor.

Three or four Ledger men answered at once, citing various stories which
had stirred the interest of Park Row.

"Oh, you Ledger fellows are always giving the college yell for each
other," said McHale, impatiently voicing the local jealousy of The
Ledger's recognized _esprit de corps_. "I've seen bigger rockets than
him come down in the ash-heap."

"He won't," prophesied Tommy Burt, The Ledger's humorous specialist.
"He'll go up and stay up. High! He's got the stuff."

"They say," observed Fowler, the star man of The Patriot, "he covers his
assignment in taxicab