"Kenny, how did you manage? That look in her face—"
"I lied."
"Gallant liar!" said Garry huskily. "I knew you would. It was the only kind way."
"Almost," said Kenny, "I did not remember to lie in time. Truth is a thing I cannot understand."
The sympathy in Garry's eyes unnerved him.
"Garry," he flamed, "why did I practice the telling of truth to end now with a lie? Why did Joan plead for a year to learn to be my wife and learn in it—not to be?"
"God knows!" said Garry gently. "Why did agony come to Brian at the hands of a boy he'd befriended? And then—to you?"
"It is the Samhain of my life," said Kenny rising. "And I am no longer John Whitaker's King of Youth. I think my youth died back there when Don thrust it aside, not meaning, I take it, to be cruel. But I grew up all at once." He frowned. "Drowning men, they say, have a kaleidoscopic vision of the past. I think sitting here that came to me. Perhaps, Garry, if Eileen had lived I would have been different—steadier. I think I loved her. I think it would have lasted. A child is a beautiful link. Perhaps that fever of vanity that grew to a burning in my veins would never have started. Started, it was like a conflagration. It drove Brian to sunsets. God knows what it didn't do. I thought only of myself—always. That desire for adulation in a woman's eyes, that curious persistent fever was, I'm sure, a sort of sex vanity. It has nearly ruined many another man's life. It nearly ruined mine. Always when I was drifting into new madness, I couldn't work. I dreamed. The Isle of Delight, always receding! I sang and whistled. The King of Youth! Only when I was drifting out again, could I bend myself to concentration and sanity. And then another look in a girl's soft eyes—and more vanity and self and delirium. But I'm tired. I want to look ahead to—to quiet and steadiness and work."
Garry, with the husk still in his throat, wandered off to the window.
"Garry!"