“So am I,” said Garry honestly.  “But—­”

“But what?”

“I wish he’d be less turbulently happy.”

“Let him,” said Sid sagely, “Darn few can.”

“A pendulum,” reminded Garry, “swings both ways.  And he’s an extremist.  If he’d just plant his two feet solidly on the ground and get his head out of the clouds.  He’s got to do it sometime.”

“Oh, hell,” said Sid.  “Give him time.  If that girl was going to marry me I’d climb up a few air-steps myself and stick my head into any old cloud.”

“Good old Sid!” said Garry affectionately.  “You’d be sure to hit your head on a star and then you’d be amazed and—­”

“Oh, you go to thunder!” blustered Sid.

By now Kenny’s Bohemia was rushing through its yearly cycle of costume dances.  Motley groups emerged at times from Ann’s castle and departed in taxis.

“And Gawd knows where,” said Mrs. Ryan from the third floor front of the tenement that faced the street.  “They’re a wild bunch and my Cassie’ll never travel wid ’em.  Last week the architeks rigged up somethin’ fierce and danced in ‘the streets of Paris,’ wid bullyvard cafes, they called ’em, built into the dance hall, an actress singin’ the Marseillaise in a flag, and a Roosian hussy dancin’ in boots.  And Mr. O’Neill, God save him for a pleasant gentleman though a bit wild in the eye, took my Dinny up to be a gamin.  Gay-min.  I thought myself he said a ‘gay mon’ and Dinny’s a bit young; but I found he meant him to peddle cigarettes about among the tables.”

In the quaint old gowns that were delighting the older painters, Joan glided through the shifting blare and color unaware of the eyes that watched and liked her.  Not so Kenny.

He knew who stared and smiled and he knew who stared too long.  He was inordinately proud of her.

“Kenny, please!” begged Garry.  “Let me paint her.  I’m going to California in April and I won’t have another chance.  I won’t be back until fall.”

“My son—­” began Kenny wearily.  Then he smiled.  “Oh, go ahead, Garry, darlin’.  I’ll not be mindin’ a bit.”

And Garry curiously enough caught the tantalizing charm of her sweetness that had baffled many an older and wiser man.

Shadows had no part in the wonder of Kenny’s winter, but an inclination to forget his quarrel with Brian and his flare of penance, violent and incomplete—­for he had never reached the longed-for grail of his son’s forgiveness—­troubled him vaguely.  In spasmodic moments of remorse he read his notebook, tremendously buoyed up by an augmenting consciousness of evolution.  Faint inner voices warned him at times not to misinterpret his exultant happiness in terms of infallibility and when they called to him he had his moments of humility and panic.

In one of them he tried to coax the fern back to life; once with an alarming air of energy and importance, he departed in a taxi and bought a great many things for Brian’s room; once when miraculously the bank and he agreed for a brief period upon his balance, he succumbed to a mathematical fit of uplift and conscience, dashed off a bewildering number of checks and left the overladen slate of his credit unmarked by even an I.O.U.  His brilliant air of calm and satisfaction thereafter was distinctly noticeable.