Nor was it selfish.

Something big and abiding had sprung up out of the ashes of his penance.
By the end of March, with a record-breaking period of work behind him and a furore of notoriety over his striking portrait of a famous beauty compelling him to a radiant admission of success, Kenny found himself lulled into the self-respecting quietude he craved.
Days back self-confidence had come to him in Hannah's kitchen and Adam Craig, in the course of time, had crushed it out with a keen and understanding leer.

Later it had returned with Adam's death, and the weary voice of Doctor Cole had shattered it.
So now on a March night of wind and hail--and this time by telephone after much tedious trouble with the wire, Doctor Cole's voice, tired, sorrowful and kind, came stabbing intrusively into his full-blown equanimity with a message of terror.
"Mr.O'Neill--" "Yes." "This is Doctor Cole of Briston, Pennsylvania." Kenny stiffened.

He had never quite forgiven the doctor for that bleak, anticlimacteric morning when he had driven dazedly away with Nellie.

Adjectives, like a man's laughter, were to him an irrefutable test.