e stairway, there to sit like a
ghoul at the top. Rain beat in Kenny's ears like a trumpet of doom.
He felt sick and dizzy. No! with the memory of that last wonderful
moment when the music had blended into the fire of his tenderness, he
could not go back. Invisible, Adam Craig would still be pervasive. He
would jar the idyl into a mockery, the indefinable malignity of him,
alert and silent up there at the head of the stairs, floating down like
an evil wind to mingle with the reminiscent sound of rain.

"Well?" said the old man softly.

"Oh, my God!" said Kenny, wiping his forehead. "I'll stay!"

"Good!" said Adam, moistening his lips. "Good! You know, Kenny," he
whispered, shivering, "I--I hate the rain."

"Yes," said Kenny wretchedly, "so do I."

"Kenny," said the old man later when Kenny had carried the lamp back
and made sure that Joan had gone to her room, "don't sulk. You're old
enough to know better."

"I'm not sulking."

"You are."

"Very well, then, I am."

"You've had enough music for one night."

Kenny did not trouble to reply. Whatever he said would be combated.

"Music," insisted Adam, "makes you as noisy as a magpie. If you're not
whistling, you're singing some damned rake of an Irish song and if
you're not singing, you're at the piano battering out a scrap-heap of
tunes."

"From the first day until the last when he goes to sleep with a daisy
quilt over him," said Kenny stiffly, "an Irishman lives his life to
music."

"Humph!" said the old man, ready for battle, "the music of his own
voice, telling lies."

Reckless, Kenny used his one weapon of composure. It made the old man
cough with fury and propel himself up and down the room in his
wheel-chair until, with a feeling of whirling fire in his brain, Kenny
wondered if a man could lose his sanity by watching an infuriated
lunatic in a wheel-chair narrowly miss everything in his way.

But he made no further effort at rebellion. Instead he went each
night, invincible in his determination not to be outdone. When by
playing on his pity Adam trapped him he smiled and shrugged. When the
old man assailed him with shafts of truth, no matter what the aftermath
of communion with himself and his notebook, he accepted it with
composure and an air of interest. When in a fury, Adam reviled him for
his phlegm, he laughed and was cursed for his pains.

"You told me, Adam," he said, "that my greatest drawback is a habit of
excitement and