a-headed
and drove the color from his face. Then he blazed into rebellion.

Failure! Vanity! Self! And Adam to-night had fused the verdict of
the other three.

Whether or not these things were true was at first of little moment.
The sting lay in the fact that someone had troubled to think them. The
careless illusion, that what he thought of himself the world thought,
lay at his feet pricked into utter collapse. It seemed to him as he
walked the floor in a tumult of hurt pride, that the world must accept
the man he knew himself to be, the man whose light-hearted existence he
loved to dramatize, a brilliant painter with piquant imperfections,
intensely human and delightful. He passionately demanded that it
accept him so without question. Good God! No one had seemed to
question until Brian in a burst of temper had brought the world about
his ears.

Well, let the world misjudge him if it chose. He was big enough, he
knew, to hold his head above it.

In a mood of lively irony he whipped forth a notebook and wrote a
sarcastic summary of his shortcomings, his lips curled in hostile
interest.

"Sunsets and vanity," he wrote with a flourish and lost his temper.
Well, that phase in Brian's life was closed forever, thanks to
Whitaker's meddling tongue. Never again would Kenny lay himself open
to misinterpretation by seeking commissions for his son. Brian could
write truth for Whitaker with a blue pencil and be damned!

"Hairbrained, unquenchable youth," he wrote next and added airily after
this: "This is likely hair and teeth."

"Irresponsible."

"Failure as a parent." This he underlined.

"Need to suffer and learn something of the psychology of sacrifice."

"Romantic attitude toward the truth."

"Improvidence. Need for plebeian regularity in money affairs and petty
debt."

"Disorder--chairs to sit down on without looking first."

"I borrow Brian's money and his clothes."

"Pawned shotgun, tennis racket, some fishing tackle and golf clubs."

"Note: Look over tickets."

"A tendency to indolence."

He had begun with an air of bored amusement; he finished grimly, read
and reread. In the light of the Craig-and-Whitaker analysis, which
dovetailed in the similarity of their venom, the details might, he
fancied with a lifting of his brows, be classified under three general
headings: youth, irresponsibility and a romantic attitude toward the
truth.

The envious charge of youth he attributed instan