“Why did you want to eat in the studio?”

“I came to talk.”

“Whitaker,” blustered Kenny, “where’s Brian?”

“Working.”

“On your paper?”

“No.  Brian’s left New York.  He’s driving somebody’s car.  And I found the job for him through my paper.  When he has money enough he plans to tramp off into God’s green world of spring to get himself in trim.  Says he’s stale and tired and thinking wrong.  In the fall he’s going abroad for me and that, Kenny, is about all I can tell you.”

“You mean,” flared Kenny, rising with a ragged napkin in his hand, “you mean, John, it’s all you will tell me!”

“Sit down,” said Whitaker, toasting a cracker over the alcohol flame.  “I prefer a sensible talk without fireworks.”

Surprised and nettled, Kenny obeyed in spite of himself.

“Now,” went on Whitaker quietly, “I came here to-night because I’m Brian’s friend and yours.”  He ignored the incredulous arch of Kenny’s eyebrows.  “Where Brian is, where he will be, I don’t propose to tell you, now or at any other time.  His wheres and his whens are the boy’s own business.  His whys I think you know.  He won’t be back.”

“He will!” thundered Kenny and thumped upon the table with his fist.

Whitaker patiently reassembled his supper.

“I think not,” he said.

“You’re not here to think,” blazed Kenny.  “You’re here to tell me what you know.”

“I’m here,” corrected John Whitaker, “to get a few facts out of my system for your own good and Brian’s.  Kenny, how much of the truth can you stand?”

Kenny threw up his hands with a reminiscent gesture of despair.

“Truth!” he repeated.  “Truth!”

“I know,” put in Whitaker, “that you regard the truth as something sacred, to be handled with delicacy and discretion.  But—­”

Kenny told him sullenly to tell it if he could.

“I don’t propose to urge Brian back here for a good many reasons.  In the first place, he’s not a painter—­”

“John,” interrupted Kenny hotly, “you are no judge of that.  I, Kennicott O’Neill, am his father.”

“And more’s the pity,” said Whitaker bluntly, “for you’ve made a mess of it.  That’s another reason.”

Kenny turned a dark red.

“You mean?”

“I mean, Kenny,” said Whitaker, his glance calm and level, “that as a parent for Brian, you are an abject failure.”

The word stung.  It was the first time in his life that Kenny had faced it.  That he, Kennicott O’Neill, Academician, with Heaven knows how many medals of distinction, could fail at anything, was a new thought, bewildering and bitter.  This time he escaped from the table and flung up a window.  Whitaker, he grumbled, never toasted crackers without burning them.  Whitaker brought him back with a look.

“Sit down,” he said again.  “I don’t propose to talk while you roam around the studio and kick things.”