It was impossible to miss the point. Joan's face went scarlet. "Oh, Kenny!" she said. "You knew--surely you knew I couldn't mean that." It was a new delight to hear her say it. "When Donald writes," reminded Kenny, "then I must go." And watching the girl's troubled face, he wondered with a thrill of triumph if at last the madness of the summer was upon her. Well, thank Heaven, he was honest and honorable. He would stay until the madness waned. Always he was fated to climb down out of the clouds first. Ah! But what if Joan slipped back into sense and sanity first? The possibility filled him with panic. What on earth would he do? CHAPTER XV IN WHICH CALIBAN SCORES It was a prospect doomed to haunt him more and more as the summer which had bade fail to be so full of peace, took on an indescribable atmosphere of complication. Where could he go, he wondered despairingly, that life would not instantly pour around him a distracting whirlpool of commotion? Was he fated to rush through life with his fingers clenched in his hair and his teeth set? Was he doomed, as Garry had once said, to run forever in circles of excitement? Stumbling and tired, Kenny tried to keep his feet unswervingly in the path of truth, colorless and uninviting as it seemed; but the strategy of his practice hour in Adam's room he was forced to abandon, heartsick for Joan and the future. His battle for her he knew had been in vain. Useless further to bombard with truth that silent, inscrutable Caliban upstairs, whose fiendish power to drive him to his notebook when he chose in turn to tell the truth, seemed uncanny. And it was practice enough to tell the truth to Joan! God grant, in all sincerity, that he might come to justify the faith in the dear eyes of her. He made one last heroic effort to break his chain of thraldom. After an interval of bitter insubordination which ended each night in surrender, he set his teeth and vowed by every sacred thing he knew that to-morrow night, summons or no summons, he would not go to the sitting room of Adam Craig. He would secretly leave the farmhouse at dusk with Joan and when Hughie knocked on his bedroom door, ready to say that the old man was lonely and in pain, he would be safe and serene in the cabin in the pines. Was it fated to be his refuge too? Torrential rain woke him in the morning. Kenny stared out at the wet valley in tragic unbelief. It simply could not be; for he wanted a dusk flecked with stars. But the rain gave no promise of abating and late that afternoon he altered the detail of his rebellion. Fortunately there were other ways. When the dusk closed in and the old man watched the clock and waited, he would go boldly downstairs to the old piano and register his rebellion in music that Adam Craig could hear. He would spend his evening openly with Joan; he would go through fire and water; he would ride the whirlwind and direct the storm but what this time he would assure his emancipation.