Scarlet with confusion, Kenny sprang to his feet. Queen of Heaven! the girl was real. She had stepped from the page of an old romance into life and laughter, wearing for the mystification of chance beholders, an old-time gown of gold brocade! The mystery of her gown, the river setting, the laughing sweetness of her face, rooted him to the spot in wonder and delight. He knew every subtlety of her coloring in one glance. Her soft exquisite eyes were brown. Tragic, they might very well seem pools of ink. Her hair? In the sun there was bronze, deep and vivid, in the shadows brown. And the sun had deepened her skin to cream and tan and rose. Thank God he was a Celt, an artist and an aesthete! He did not mean to keep on staring nor could he stop. He was horribly disturbed. For he knew the signs as the traveler knows the landmarks of an old, familiar road. Heaven help him, one of his periodic fits of madness was upon him! It could not be helped. He was falling in love again. And he was tragically sorry. Brian would get so far ahead. Standing there with lunacy in his veins and his head awhirl Kenny looked ahead with foreboding and foresaw days of delicious torment. He knew with the profound and sorrowful wisdom of experience that it would not, could not last. Almost he could have forecast to the day the sad descent into sanity, reactive, monotonous, unemotional, inevitable as the end of the road. But even with his conscience up in arms, he welcomed his surrender. Besides, rebellion, as he knew of old, was utterly futile. He must let the thing run its course. The thought of flight from a peril of sweetness he banished instantly. To run away was to deny himself the fullness of life men said he needed as an artist. It was unthinkable. Nay, it was unscrupulous, for the greatness of his gift Kenny regarded as an obligation. Besides, Kenny denied himself nothing that he wanted, having considered his wants in detail and found them human, complex and delightful, and sufficiently harmless. Passionately at war with the new complication in his quest for Brian, Kenny in frantic excitement blamed everything but himself. He blamed the girl. A girl with a face like that had absolutely no right to be loitering in a spot of such enchantment. He blamed the mystery of her gown. Mystery always did for him. He blamed the river and the sylvan wildness all around him and went on staring. "Please say something!" The girl's laughter had changed to shyness, then to mystification. Kenny brushed his hair back with a sigh. No fault of his if Fate grew prankish and set the stage with gold brocade and an ancient boat and such a ferryman. He had evoked romance and mystery with the battered horn and he could not escape. All of it had fairly leaped at him and caught him unawares. "I--I beg your pardon," he said. "For sleeping?" The girl smiled a little.