"I—I can't, Brian."
"Please, Joan. I'll tell Kenny myself in the morning."
"No," said Joan. "I—can't. I—I wish I could."
"So do I," said Brian. He walked away.
Shaking and sobbing, Joan flung herself upon the bed.
"Sid writes me you're home," Kenny wrote to Garry in September. "What about the car? Come up for a while and drive it home. We can do some sketching. Brian's full of Irish melancholy and waiting for word from Whitaker. He may go any time. Joan's tired and busy with clothes. Don's cranky and I'm rather at a loose end, hunting things to do."
Puzzled, Garry went.
"I can't make out what's wrong," he wrote to Sid, "Kenny's rational enough, but Brian's strung to the breaking point. I suspect it's just as it always has been—they're miserable apart and hopeless together. But the year has been a sobering one, and what used to flash, they bottle up. In my opinion the sooner Brian gets away the better. He's not himself."