tly to the thinning of
John Whitaker's grayish hair, and felt better. In irresponsibility he
read, agreeably, needful temperament. And his romantic attitude toward
the truth was merely a brilliant overplus of imagination without which
life would be insufferably dull.

He read the list again with colors flying and drum beating victory.
Though singly he could refute each item, an unguarded perusal when he
felt complacent, brought the hot blood back to his face in a rush of
mortification and dismay.

With a curse he flung the book across the room. Then unreasonably he
went after it and wrote at the end: "Life is a battle. I do not fight.
And life is not an individual adventure."

The final sentence startled him most of all.

Again he read it all and the memory of Brian, white, aggressive,
desperately intent upon escape, came between him and his quest of
self-content. It always bothered him. It had driven him to hunt the
psaltery stick, repent his lie to Garry and water the fern. It had
driven him out upon the road. Mocking voices rose now from the depths.
Was it--could it all be true? The shock of the thought was cataclysmic
and he longed for the self-respect and confidence in which he had
basked that night in Hannah's kitchen. Must the world side with Brian?
He was sorry about the shotgun. He was sorry about the sunsets. By
the Blessed Bell of Clare, he was willing to be sorry about anything,
little as he felt himself to blame. Was he to blame? Had he not paid
for it all in his days of stormy penance?

Out of his white-hot revolt clear vision came to him, as it sometimes
did, with incomprehensible, dart-like swiftness, and leveled him to the
dust. Some of it he would not face but he saw his days upon the road
with truth and shame. He had failed in his penance. Garry was right.
He did everything by fits and starts. And he could justify whatever
was most conducive to his comfort and his inclination. His pilgrimage
had been farcical. He had fled from discomfort, magnifying pettiness
into tragedy. And he had been disloyal to the son he loved. For there
under the willow when his startled eyes had found Joan, he had
passionately made up his mind to linger. Nay more, even then in the
dim recesses of his mind, he had hoped there would be no clue to send
him forth again in quest of Brian. And if there had been, Kenny faced
the fact that he would not have gone. . . . No, he would not have
gone. . . .