He read the letter again and the poetry of the open road filled his veins with the fire of inspiration.  Tavern of Stars!  Old Gaffer Moon, full-faced and silver!  Tree-walls and Dame Wind a-sweeping!  Why, the lad was a poet—­a poet like his father.  And the big-hearted kindness of him, thrashing the runaway into sense.  Irish temper there!  Kenny felt a passionate thrill of pride in his offspring.  Yes, Brian was like his father, thank God, even to the Celtic curse of homesickness.

“But to think of him,” he marveled in a wave of tenderness, “living in a corncrib on seven cents a day!”

Again and again he read between the lines, finding sanity and sense, compassion and humor.  The inherited charm of Brian’s personality filled him with intense delight.

“Always,” Kenny remembered, “he must be taking care of someone.”

It gave him a sharp pang of jealousy that that someone was a stranger.

But the thrill of penance was in his blood.  If Brian was big enough to see himself in the wrong, no less was Kennicott O’Neill, his unsuccessful father.  And he had driven Brian forth upon the road.  For that he must atone.

That the solution of everything now lay at hand, Kenny never doubted.  Already he had rocketed sentimentally into inspiration.  If a certain vagueness of detail sent him roving abstractedly around the studio with the letter in his hand, the inspiration in itself was amazingly clear.  Yes, he would fare forth and find Brian.  He would tramp every mile of the road as Brian had done.  He would find the farmhouse, the wood and the river!  There happily would be some clue or other that he needed.  And Kenny, in rags and penitential, his feet blistered by the hardships of the road, would overtake his son and apologize for everything.  Nay, more, he would promise anything.  After that the rest would be easy.  Brian had written it there in a letter.  Kenny could wind his son around his finger.  Yes, it was all quite clear.  And Brian helpfully would be shocked and thrilled at the sacrificial tribute of penance.  Kenny pursed his lips and nodded.  He would even concede the sunsets.  That, after John Whitaker’s cold-blooded misinterpretation, was necessary to his own self-respect—­and Brian’s happiness.

Ah, love was the only thing in the world that counted, love and art.  Not the love of woman, which was after all but an intermittent intoxicant, but the love of one’s own.

Kenny pitied in foretaste the ragged parent who would come upon the camp fire of his son, picturesque and repentant, and dramatized the meeting, a lump in his throat.  Emotionally it was complex to be actor and audience both.  Thank God, he reflected, as he opened a closet door, dragged forth a battered multitude of bags and suit cases and began an impatient upheaval of bureau drawers, he was a man of action.  When Garry entered a half hour later he found the studio floor littered with preparation.