Joan stared absently at the road ahead.

“To Ireland,” she said.

The answer pleased him.

“I mind me,” he said instantly, “of an Irish tale of Finn McCoul.”

Joan did not answer.

“Tell me,” she said at last.  “Finn and you are always delightful.”

Kenny stared at her in marked reproach.

“Joan!” he exclaimed.

“What—­what is it, Kenny?”

“That’s just the sort of polite nothing you learned in New York!”

“I’m sorry, Kenny.  I’m—­tired.  And just for a minute I wasn’t listening.  You know how it is.  You hear an echo in your mind a long while after and answer in a panic.”  She brushed her cheek against his sleeve with a remorseful gesture of appeal.  His arm went round her.

“There!” he said with a sigh of relief.  “That’s better.  I’m lonesome when we’re not in tune.”

“And the story?”

Kenny told of a fairy face that Finn had seen in a lake among the heather.

“Leaf-brown eyes had the nymph, I take it, and satin-cream skin with a rose showin’ through and allurin’ lashes maybe dipped in the ink-pots of the fairies.”

“What,” said Joan from the shelter of his arm, “is a blarney stone?”

“A substitute for lips!” said Kenny instantly and kissed her.

“And Finn?”

“Plunged into the waters of the lake, he did, as any son of Erin would—­and found the maid.”

But Joan’s eyes were absently fixed upon the road again and Kenny abandoned his legend with a sigh until he bethought himself to use its climax in reproach.

“And when Finn reappeared, he was an old, old man, as old as a man may feel when his lady’s attention wanders.”

Joan colored and laughed, her eyes faintly mischievous, wholly apologetic.

“Finn’s youth,” Kenny gallantly assured her, “was restored to him by magic and surely there is magic in a woman’s smile.”

They motored on in a silence that Kenny found depressing.  When would Arcady come again, he wondered rebelliously, wistful for the sparkle of that other summer when fairies, silver-shod, had danced upon the moonlit lake.  The strain of worry had tired them both.

The wind swept coolly toward them sweet with pine.  Wind and pine up here were always mingling.  A night—­a moon for lovers!  The clasp of his arm tightened.

The peace of the night was insistent.  After all with worry at an end Arcady might not lie so very far away—­it was creeping into his heart, sweet with the music of many trees.  Joan too perhaps—­he stole a glance at the girl’s face, colorless in the moonlight like some soft, exquisite flower—­and drew up the emergency brake with a jerk.  Her lashes were wet.

“Joan,” he exclaimed, “you’re not crying!”

She tried to smile and buried her face on his shoulder.

“I think,” she said forlornly, “it—­it’s just because everything has turned out so—­so nicely.”