“I make a point of never losing my head over a model,” declared Kenny with an air.  “It’s a hindrance to work.  You concentrate on a type and every picture you do advertises your devotion.  Suppose I married her!”

“Heaven help her!” snapped Garry, and went out, slamming the door.

Kenny offended, followed him home.  He felt aggrieved and talkative.

If Kenny had succeeded in propelling himself into one of his nervous ecstasies of inspiration, thereby normalizing his existence to some extent, if Reynolds had not appeared and simplified the painter’s credit to a point where he made no further search for unsympathetic models.  Fate, weaving the destiny of two O’Neills, would have changed her loom.  As it was, sick with brooding and pity for himself, Kenny abandoned all pretense of labor and rushed on blindly to his fate.  The spring was in his blood.  What form of midsummer madness lay ahead of him depended now upon the hairtrigger of impulse.  A wind, a sketch, the perfume of a flower, and he would be off wherever the reminiscence called him.  He whistled constantly.  That, as Jan pointed out, was always a bad sign with Kenny.  It meant that he felt perilously transient and would rocket up in the air when a spark came that pleased him.  He had been much the same, Fahr remembered, the summer he embarked for Syria upon a tramp steamer—­to the captain’s frantic regret.

In the end, feeling absurdly sorry for him, Garry unwittingly sent the spark in by Pietro.

It was a letter from Brian.

  “Tavern of Stars
   Open Country
   God’s Green World of Spring

“Dear Garry: 

“The purpose of this letter is primarily a favor.  Therefore without pretense I’ll have done with it at once.  You’ll find in the studio a scrapbook of clippings which represent my ebullitions in print.  Whitaker wants them, I believe, for purposes of conference.  It will save him running through his files.

“I’ve been on the road for weeks, tramping myself into blessed weariness at night.  More often than not I sleep in the open.  I’m writing this with the aid of a pocket searchlight.  Mine host, old Gaffer Moon, smiles down upon the ashes of my camp fire, full-faced and silver.  An excellent host!  Never once has he grumbled about light or pay and he grants me a roof without question.  Ah! it’s a blessed old Tavern of Stars, Garry!  Ramshackle enough in all faith, for there are gaps in the tree-walls and Dame Wind’s a-sweeping night and day, but luckily I’ve a blanket I carry by day and need by night.

“I’ve a road-mate.  I think in time he’ll be my friend, though he isn’t yet.  And thereby hangs a tale.