His color was gone, his eyes curiously tired and wistful.
"So!" said Kreiling gently and passed on to the cheese with deliberate tact, pushing Jan away.

A minute later his hand came down with heartiness on Kenny's shoulder.
"Spitzbube!" he rumbled affectionately.
Kenny laughed but Whitaker saw that his cigarette was shaking.
"Music," he reflected, feeling sympathetic, "always makes him wild and sentimental.

And Max sang like an archangel." "Now, Kenny," commanded Kreiling, nibbling cheese and rye bread, "play." Kenny sullenly obeyed.

After the first effort, something rebellious touched his sullen mood to fire and he played fragments of the Second Rhapsodic with madness in his touch.
Sid, aware of it, stared in round-eyed apprehension at his back.
"He's just in the mood again for rocketing," he decided.
From then on Kenny's reckless gayety kept them in an uproar.
When someone clamored for a wood-fire tale he told them of Finn's love for Deirdre.

But the discussion it provoked bored him and he dropped back, smoking, in his chair, "There is love and love," said Max Kreiling, "and to be in love is torture and a thing of self, but when the big splendid tenderness comes after the storm of self and craving, the tenderness that knows more of giving than of demanding, it comes to stay.