. The dream if anything became a shade more clear.
Well, if a man must dream, let him dream thus, vividly, turning the
clock back to maids unbelievably quaint and winsome in old brocade.
Sweet as an Irish smile, the face of this one, and as haunting. And
beyond, an old flat-bottomed punt and a river, a real river--

Scarlet with confusion, Kenny sprang to his feet. Queen of Heaven! the
girl was real. She had stepped from the page of an old romance into
life and laughter, wearing for the mystification of chance beholders,
an old-time gown of gold brocade! The mystery of her gown, the river
setting, the laughing sweetness of her face, rooted him to the spot in
wonder and delight. He knew every subtlety of her coloring in one
glance. Her soft exquisite eyes were brown. Tragic, they might very
well seem pools of ink. Her hair? In the sun there was bronze, deep
and vivid, in the shadows brown. And the sun had deepened her skin to
cream and tan and rose. Thank God he was a Celt, an artist and an
aesthete!

He did not mean to keep on staring nor could he stop. He was horribly
disturbed. For he knew the signs as the traveler knows the landmarks
of an old, familiar road. Heaven help him, one of his periodic fits of
madness was upon him! It could not be helped. He was falling in love
again. And he was tragically sorry. Brian would get so far ahead.

Standing there with lunacy in his veins and his head awhirl Kenny
looked ahead with foreboding and foresaw days of delicious torment. He
knew with the profound and sorrowful wisdom of experience that it would
not, could not last. Almost he could have forecast to the day the sad
descent into sanity, reactive, monotonous, unemotional, inevitable as
the end of the road. But even with his conscience up in arms, he
welcomed his surrender. Besides, rebellion, as he knew of old, was
utterly futile. He must let the thing run its course.

The thought of flight from a peril of sweetness he banished instantly.
To run away was to deny himself the fullness of life men said he needed
as an artist. It was unthinkable. Nay, it was unscrupulous, for the
greatness of his gift Kenny regarded as an obligation. Besides, Kenny
denied himself nothing that he wanted, having considered his wants in
detail and found them human, complex and delightful, and sufficiently
harmless.

Passionately at war with the new complication in his quest for Brian,
Kenny in frantic excitement bla