He thought of Joan.

He thought of the bleak old rooms that seemed one in spirit with the man before him.

A wrinkled, evil old man, he told himself with a shudder, with piercing eyes and a face Italian in its subtlety.
Adam Craig looked steadily at the Irishman in the doorway and found his stare returned.

The gaze of neither faltered.

So began what Kenny, when his singular relations with the old man had goaded him to startled appraisal, was pleased to call a "friendship that was never a friendship and a feud that was never a feud." "I sent you a message," said Adam Craig.
"Your niece brought it." The old man tapped with slender, wasted fingers upon the arm of his chair.
"What was it ?" he asked guilelessly.
"As I remember it," stammered Kenny in surprise, "you were good enough to say that I might stay here as long as I chose." "Like all women and some Irishmen," said Adam Craig, "she lied.