five lurid with melodrama?

And the brutal practice hour in Adam's room when he had told the truth!
Kenny went sick and cold and shivered. How unwittingly he had flung
the old man's poverty in his teeth! How at times it must have hurt!
The memory made him shrink. And it hadn't been truth. He had battled
for Joan with misinterpretation and cruelty; he had practiced the truth
with the telling of untruth. And the proud old man who veiled his
poverty with pretense, had listened, listened inscrutably and laughed,
ready to thrust from the grave itself.

Ah! Fate was forever flinging down her gauntlet.

"To Kennicott O'Neill, my friend, my signet ring." His friend! In
spite of the practice hour--his friend. Kenny's eyes smarted.

"Oh, Adam, Adam!" he said, sick at heart, "I beg your pardon."

The snow crunched steadily under Nellie's feet. Kenny stared sadly at
the road ahead. Could he tell Joan what now he knew: that when the few
bills were paid and the estate balanced, there would be no money left
for the year of study?

Perhaps Joan would marry him now--at once--to-morrow! And they could
leave the farm together. After all there was silver to his cloud.
Kenny brightened.

A preposterous notion of hers, that unfitness. The memory of the
sunset hour in the cabin came again to darken the silver lining of his
cloud. Joan's arms, Joan's voice, Joan's eyes had pleaded; it would
make her happier to wait and study and watch his world before she came
to it, his wife.

Kenny sighed.

It would make her--happier. And the problem still was with him.

Kenny cursed the evil in the world that had forced men to convention.
If only he could help her! If only--

A car was coming up behind him with a familiar noise of rattle. It was
the doctor. Kenny sat up, alert, inspired, excited.

"Doctor," he called cheerfully, "is there a long distance telephone
near?"

"A mile on. Road to the right," called the doctor, inwardly amazed at
his visitor's mercurial disposition. "They call it Rink's Hotel. Not
much of a place. Really a road house. But you'll find a telephone."

Kenny found the telephone at Rink's Hotel in a pantry near the barroom
and closed the door to insure his privacy. It seemed an interminable
interval of waiting, an interval of blankness filled with voices
calling numbers on to further voices, before the Club Central answered.
Again he waited, tapping with impatience on the table. When the voic