Kreiling, nibbling cheese and rye bread, "play."

Kenny sullenly obeyed. After the first effort, something rebellious
touched his sullen mood to fire and he played fragments of the Second
Rhapsodic with madness in his touch.

Sid, aware of it, stared in round-eyed apprehension at his back.

"He's just in the mood again for rocketing," he decided.

From then on Kenny's reckless gayety kept them in an uproar.

When someone clamored for a wood-fire tale he told them of Finn's love
for Deirdre. But the discussion it provoked bored him and he dropped
back, smoking, in his chair,

"There is love and love," said Max Kreiling, "and to be in love is
torture and a thing of self, but when the big splendid tenderness comes
after the storm of self and craving, the tenderness that knows more of
giving than of demanding, it comes to stay. But it's not the love of
barbarity like Finn's. It's an evolution."

"Ask Kenny," said Mac mischievously. "He's an expert."

"Love, my son," said Kenny wearily, "is poetic like summer lightning.
It flashes, blinds in a glory of light--and then disappears--in time."

He tired early and sent them home. Whitaker longed to linger but the
moody cordiality of Kenny's good night was only too significant. He
departed with regret.

"Garry!" called Kenny at the door.

Garry turned back.

"I meant you to wait," said Kenny irritably, "but you got out before I
could tell you." He closed the door. "Garry, what were the men in the
grill saying to-night when I came in?"

Caught unawares Garry flushed and stammered.

"Why," he evaded uncomfortably, "it began about the peasant picture in
the grillroom. Everybody likes it."

"And then?"

"We talked some of the last thing you did--the winter landscape of snow
and pines."

Garry looked away.

"Out with it!" said Kenny suspiciously. "For God's sake grant me the
privilege at least of lumping it all in one supreme period of upheaval.
They didn't like the pine picture?"

"On the contrary," Garry hastened to assure him, "Hazleton said you are
brilliantly skillful."

"Brilliantly skillful! But?" prompted Kenny and looked a question.
"Brilliant skill," he added moodily, "doesn't always make a big
painter."

"Hazleton said as much," admitted Garry.

"I suppose it's best to tell you, Kenny," he added honestly, hoping to
spur the culprit on to more and better work. "It may help. They said
downstairs that you interpret everything, even tre