The truth of it was, he owned at times, he was homesick for Joan and fed his loneliness with letters he felt himself obliged to write. That was inevitable, for he had fled from an idyl and the memory of its charm must lessen slowly. Often with an eye upon the clock he found himself picturing the routine of the farm and longing for its freedom from the petty need of work. He blew the horn beneath the willow and watched Joan cross the river in the punt. He climbed the garret stairway and helped her pick a gown. He watched the Gray Man steal along the ridge, lingering in boxwood paths and in the orchard. And then with night among the pines and the plaintive voice of autumn wind, Joan was climbing down the vine and hurrying through the wood to the cabin, and Adam with his eye upon the brandy was counting wearily when the clock struck. How the wind would rattle at his windows! How the log would flare! How Adam must be longing for excitement! And how glad he was that he himself had found a safe hiding place in a lonely tree-stump for the lantern Joan had reluctantly agreed to carry since the fall closed in. Um . . . Joan would be building a fire in the cabin now and drawing the shades and Mr. Abbott would be picking his way through the pines with a book beneath his arm. Kenny glowered some at Mr. Abbott. An eye for nothing there but duty and even that he saw in a stark and unromantic way. And he lacked a sense of humor. He'd proved it in the river. Joan answered his letters with an adorable primness that filled him with delight. It reflected Mr. Abbott. But her letters ended always with the naivete of a child. They all missed him. It was pleasant to be missed. The pleasure was curiously reactive. Kenny's irritability grew too marked to be ignored. Jan and Sid and Garry met and talked him over. "What's wrong with him?" demanded Sid, amazed. "Garry, what is it? He's as quarrelsome as a magpie and nothing suits him. He barks at the club-boys and if you drift into the studio you're about as welcome as the measles." "It's not because he's busy," said Garry grimly. "Nothing I've found is further from his mind than the thought of work." "And it's plain Brian isn't coming back," put in Jan. "He might as well face that fact and have done with it. Personally I've lost patience with him. He acts like a sulky kid." Later Jan improvised a "scarlet fever" placard which Kenny in the course of time found nailed upon his door. He read with amazed and offended eyes that he was temporarily in temper quarantine.