"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