away the husks of cumulative prejudice and find the kernel of truth for
herself.

Joan went toward the stairs; he followed her with a troubled sigh. The
stage mother bothered him. With her he had bridged a gulf it would
have taken weeks to span, but the trust in Joan's eyes still hurt. If
only he could have begun upon a rock, Brian's rock of fact and not the
shifting sands of his own errant fancy! It would have been a glory to
live up to the faith in the girl's wistful eyes.

He was sorry he had climbed the stairway, sorry he had solved the
mystery of the brocade gown, sorry he had lied, sorry, frenziedly sorry
that whatever new thing slipped into his life, no matter how simple and
beautiful it seemed, took on the familiar complexity fatal to his peace
of mind.

But he was passionately grateful for the tense moment when Joan had
seemed to turn to him for sympathy, a wild and lonely dryad of a girl
in a mended gown.




CHAPTER VII

THE BLOSSOM STORM

At nightfall, with his telegram to Garry depressingly linked with a
memory of winding, sodden, lonely roads, dripping woods and the clink
of milk-cans, Kenny was summoned to the sitting room of Adam Craig.