"Romance and mystery," said Kenny, lighting a cigarette and smiling at her through a cloud of smoke, "were always the death of me. My fancy's wayward and romantic. Afterward your will-of-the-wisp charm held me oddly. You kept yourself apart and precious. And I was always pursuing. It was provocative--and unfamiliar. And then came Samhain, the--the summer-ending." There was an odd note in his voice. "I faced a new experience. I had gone over the usual duration of my madness and I thought," he smiled, "I thought I was loving you for good. But--"
Her dark eyes stared at him, wistful and yet in the moment of her hope a shade reproachful.
"And--your love--did not last, Kenny?" It was a forlorn little voice, for all its unmistakable note of rejoicing. How very young she was--and childlike!
"It--did--not--last!" said Kenny deliberately. "It never does with me. I should have known it. I love you sincerely, girleen. I always shall. But I love you as I would have loved--my daughter."
"Your daughter! Kenny, why then did you speak so of the flood of Killarney?"
"I was testing you. You can see for yourself. I could not honorably tell you this, dear, if you still cared."
"But I do care," cried Joan, flinging out her hands with a gesture of appeal. "I love you so much, Kenny, that it hurts."
"And that, mavourneen, is as it should be."
He told her of the stage mother. Let the lie go with the castle he had built upon it. And he would begin afresh.
"Ah," said Joan, dismissing it with shining eyes, "there, Kenny, you meant only to be kind."
He wondered wearily why the lie with all its torment had not shocked her. Truth was queer.
Joan glided toward the door. He caught in her face the look of a white flame and dropped his eyes. A Botticelli look. Ah, well, it was beautiful to be young and joyous!
And she was gone. Kenny lay back in his chair and closed his eyes; the sound of her flying feet death in his ears.
Often Kenny had appreciatively dramatized for himself possible minutes of tragedy. They were always opportunities for Shakespearian soliloquy and gesture.
Now he lay back in his chair much too tired for tragedy and gesture. And the need of soliloquy would have found him dumb. Upper-most in his mind was a dream in which Joan had peeped down at him from a balloon that went ever and ever higher--like the Isle of Delight that was always--receding. He had sensed in her to-night that aerial aloofness he had felt when he blocked old Adam out from his dream of love. Liebestraum! The stabbing pain in his heart grew hotter.