She is quite right, I said to myself, as I took a seat under the apple-tree by the table laid for dinner under the great bough—she is quite right. I must leave Ireland if I am not to grieve my brother. And it would be well to spread the news, for as soon as everybody knows that I'm going, I shall be free to stay as long as I please. AE will miss me and John Eglinton; Yeats will bear up manfully; Longworth, too, will miss me, and I shall miss them all.... But are they my kin? And if not, who are my kin? Steer, Tonks, Sickert, Dujardin—why enumerate? Ah, here is he who cast his spell over me from across the seas and keeps me here for some great purpose, else why am I here?

The warm hour prompted you, AE, to look through the hawthorns.

It was the whiteness of the cloth that caught my eye.

And you were surprised to see the table laid under the apple-tree in this late season? But the only change is an hour less of light than a month ago; the evenings are as dry as they were in July; no dew falls; so I consulted Teresa, who never opposes my wishes—her only virtue. Here she comes across the sward with lamps; and we shall dine in the midst of mystery. My fear is that the mystery may be deepened by the going out of the lamps. Teresa is not very capable, but I keep her for her amiability and her conversation behind my chair when I dine alone. Teresa, are you sure you've wound the lamps; you've seen the oil flowing over the rim? She assured me that she had. You cannot have seen anything of the kind, I answered. The lamp has not been wound. At that moment the wicket slammed. Whoever this may be, AE, do you entertain him. It is you, John Eglinton? Teresa and Moderator Lamps are incompatible. Next year I shall devise a system of aboreal illumination.

But I heard today that you're thinking of leaving us.

Who has been tittle-tattling in the Library this afternoon?

I wasn't in the Library this afternoon; so it must have been yesterday that I overheard some conversation as it passed through the turnstile.

But you aren't thinking of leaving us? AE asked.

Not tomorrow, nor the day after, nor next year; I can't leave till the end of my lease, and by then you'll have had enough of me; don't you think so?

You're not really thinking of leaving us?

The only foundation for the rumour is, that I mentioned to a lady the other day that I didn't look upon Ireland as the end of my earthly adventure. And she must have told one of her neighbours. Twenty-four hours are all that is required for news to reach the National Library. John's face darkened. The National Library should not be spoken of as a house of gossip, even in joke.

But you'll never find elsewhere a house as suitable to your pictures, as beautiful a garden to walk in, or friends as appreciative of your conversation. You'll not find a finer intelligence than Yeats's in London, or John Eglinton's.

I am certain I shall never find myself among a more agreeable circle of friends. I am heart-broken, so necessary are you all to me. Each stands for something.

I should like to hear what AE stands for in your mind. Can you tell us?

He makes me feel at times that the thither side is not dark but dusk, and that an invisible hand weaves a thread of destiny through the daily woof of life. He makes me feel that our friendship was begun in some anterior existence.

And will be continued—

Perhaps, AE. How conscious he is of his own eternity! I said, turning to John Eglinton.

Yet you are leaving us.

How insistent he is, John! And yet, for all we know, he may be the first to leave us. He has certain knowledge of different incarnations. The first was in India, the second in Persia, his third, of which he keeps a distinct memory, happened in Egypt. About Babylon I am not so sure. But AE dislikes irreverence, especially a light treatment of his ideas, and I did not dare to add that in Heaven he is known as Albar, but asked him instead, if he were redeemed from the task of earning his daily bread, would he retire to Bengal and spend the rest of his life translating the Sacred Books of the East. His answer to this interesting question we shall never know, for, yielding to the impulse of a sudden conviction, John Eglinton interjected:

If AE leaves Dublin it will not be for Bengal but for Ross's Point, formerly haunted by Mananaan Mac Lir and the Dagda, and now the Palestine of an interesting heresy known as AEtheism.

At the end of our laughter AE said:

Now, will you tell us what idea John Eglinton stands for?

He and you are opposite poles, I answered. You stand for belief, John Eglinton for unbelief. On one side of me sits the Great Everything, and on the other the Great Nothing.

And which would you prefer that death should reveal to you? John Eglinton asked. Nothing or Everything? You don't answer. Admit that you would just as lief that death discovered Nothing.

It is easy to imagine a return to the darkness out of which we came—out of which I came; and difficult to imagine my life in the grey dusk that AE's eyes have revealed to me. But since you deny the worth of this life—

I do not deny, John Eglinton answered.

Yes, by your abstinence from your prose you deny the value of your life. He doubts everything, AE—the future of Ireland, the value of literature, even the value of his own beautiful prose. Watch the frown coming into his face! I am forgetting—we mustn't speak of a collected edition of his works lest we spoil for him the taste of that melon.

Who else is coming to dinner? John Eglinton asked.

Conan said he would come, and he will turn up probably in the middle of dinner, pleading that he missed his train.

Let us hear what idea Conan stands for, said John Eglinton.

An invisible hand introduces a special thread into the woof which we must follow or perish, and as we stand with girt loins a peal of laughter often causes us to hesitate.

Laughter behind the veil, said John, and he spoke to me of a poem that he had received from Conan for publication in Dana. He had it in his pocket, and would be glad if I would say how it struck me. Only two stanzas, hardly longer than a Limerick. But the poem could not be found among the bundle of papers he drew from his pocket, and when he gave up the search definitely, AE said:

I'm going to write the myth of your appearance and evanishment from Dublin, Moore; the legend of a Phooka who appeared some years ago, and the young people crowded about him and he smelted them in the fires of fierce heresies, and petrified them with tales of frigid immoralities, and anybody who wilted from the heat the Phooka flung from him, and anybody who was petrified, he broke in twain and flung aside as of no use, and at last only four stood the test: AEolius, because he was an artist and was enchanted with the performances of the Phooka; Johannes also remained, because he was of a contrairy disposition and was only happy when contrairy or contradicting, and the Phooka gave him the time of his life. There was Olius, or Oliverius, who was naturally more ribald than the Phooka, and had nothing to learn in blasphemy from him, but undertook to complete his education; and there was Ernestius, who practised Law, and could not be brow-beat; and to these four the Phooka revealed his true being.

You'll write that little pastoral for the next number of Dana, won't you, AE? for we're short of an article.



You mean that you would like me to tell you the true reason. But is there a true reason for anything? There are a hundred reasons why I should not remain in Ireland always. And then, it being impossible for me to resist AE's eyes, I said: Well, the immediate reason is the Colonel, who says it will be a great grief to him if I declare myself a Protestant.

But you aren't thinking of doing any such thing? You can't, said John Eglinton. As I was about to answer, AE interrupted:

But I never thought of the Colonel as a Catholic. I used to know him very well some years ago, and I always looked upon him as an Agnostic.

He may have been in his youth, like others; but he is sinking into Catholicism. The last time he came to Dublin we quarrelled, and I thought for good, on account of what I said to him about his children. Don't ask me, AE, to repeat what I said; it would be too painful, and I wish to forget the words. We shall never be the same friends as we were once, but we are still friends. I succeeded in persuading him to stop a few days longer, and during those days, while trying to avoid all religious questions, we fell to talking of family history, and he mentioned, accidentally of course, that my family isn't a Catholic family, that it was my great-grandfather that 'verted—my grandfather wasn't a Catholic, but my father was, more or less, in his old age. I assure you the news that there was only one generation of Catholicism behind me came as sweetly as the south wind blowing over the downs, and I said at once I should like to declare myself a Protestant. It was then that he answered that it would be a great grief to him if I did so. I shouldn't so much mind grieving him in so good a cause if I hadn't used words that drove him out of the house. My dilemma was most painful—to bear the shame of being considered a Catholic all my life or—so I consulted a friend of mine in whom I have great confidence, and she said: If you can't remain in Ireland without declaring yourself a Protestant, and wouldn't grieve your brother, you had better leave Ireland.

But were you in earnest when you told your brother you'd like to declare yourself a Protestant? John Eglinton asked.

I don't joke on such subjects.

What means did you propose to take? A letter to The Times?

I had thought of that and of a lecture, but decided that the first step to take would be to write to the Archbishop.

But the Archbishop would ask if you believed in a great many things which you don't believe in.

Everything can be explained. I take it for granted that being a man of the world, he would not press me to say that I believed in the resurrection of the body. St Paul didn't believe in it. I can cite you text after text—

We're not in disagreement with you; but we're thinking whether Dr Peacock will accept your interpretation of the texts.

You think that the Archbishop would ask me to accept the bodily resurrection of Christ?

I'm afraid, said John Eglinton, that you'll have to accept both body and spirit.

I hadn't foreseen these difficulties. AE tried to prove to me that I should stay in Ireland, and now you are providing me with excellent reasons for leaving.

It's only contrairy John that's talking, said AE in his most dulcet tones. You'll never leave us.

Well, I've told you, AE, that I can't leave till the end of my lease. My dear AE, sufficient for the day, or for the evening, I should have said. I see Teresa and the gardener coming down the greensward, and soon the refreshing odour of pea soup will arise through the branches. Now, the question is, whether we shall eat the melon with salt and pepper before the soup, or reserve it till the end of dinner and eat it with sugar. But where's Conan? Teresa, will you kindly walk across and ask—

The wicket clanged, and we watched the author of most of the great Limericks coming towards us.

There was a young man of St John's, I cried.

My masterpiece ... it was always popular, he added, dropping his voice, as Yeats does when he is complimented on Innisfree. It was always popular, and from the first. But you remind me of a tale of long ago—not the Trinity, though there are bread and wine by you. I am thinking of some Latin poet—it is Moore that puts the story into my head—a Latin poet banished to the Pontic seas—Ovid sitting with his friends.

So you've heard the news?

I have heard no news, none since my parlourmaid burst into my study with the news that the lamps were lighted in the garden and that the company were at table; and what better news could I hear than that?

You haven't heard that Moore is leaving us?

Leaving us! I hope his friend Sir Thornley Stoker hasn't discovered anything very special in Liffey Street. He has been up and down there many times lately on the trail of a Sheraton sideboard, and Naylor has been asked to keep it till an appendicitis should turn up. The Chinese Chippendale mirror over the drawing-room chimney-piece originated in an unsuccessful operation for cancer; the Aubusson carpet in the back drawing-room represents a hernia; the Renaissance bronze on the landing a set of gall-stones; the Ming Cloisonnée a floating kidney; the Buhl cabinet his opinion on an enlarged liver; and Lady Stoker's jewels a series of small operations performed over a term of years.

We broke into laughter; he is very amusing, AE whispered; and at the end of our laughter I explained that Sir Thornley was supreme in the suburbs of art; but as soon as he attempted to storm the citadel, to buy pictures, he was as helpless as an old housewife.

How many Sir Joshuas and Gainsboroughs have I saved him from!

If he ever sells his collection I suppose it will fetch a great deal of money.

It never will be sold in his lifetime, John, but at his death there will be a great auction. The terms of the will are explicit, arranging not only for his own departure but for the departure of the curiosities. Wound in an old Florentine brocade, he will be laid in a second-hand coffin, 1 BC, and driven to Mount Jerome; and on the same evening the curiosities will leave for England, Naylor, Sir Thornley's chief agent, accompanying them to Kingstown; and standing at the end of the pier, two yards of crêpe floating from his hat like a gonfalon, and a Renaissance wand in his hand, his sighs will fill the sails of the parting ship, without, however, his tears sensibly increasing the volume of the rising tide, and when the last speck disappears over the horizon he will fall suddenly forward.

But for what feat of surgery did a grateful patient send him the second-hand coffin?

Conan continued to pile imagination upon imagination until the conversation drifted back to the point from which it had started. Had I really made up my mind to leave Dublin?

My dear Conan, if you'll stop talking Moore will tell you why he conceives himself to be under an obligation to leave us.

I'm sure I beg pardon. I didn't believe in the possibility of losing you till you're carried to the woods in Kiltoon, the spot mentioned in the chapter of The Lake which you read to us last Saturday under this tree.

It's only this, Conan, that John Eglinton heard in the National Library—

Well, of course, if it was heard in the National Library—and Conan went off into a peal of laughter, bringing a dark and perplexed look into John's eyes.

Well, Conan, if you want to hear why I thought of leaving Ireland, not today or tomorrow, but eventually, I'll tell you, but I must not be interrupted again. AE and John Eglinton, who have no Catholic relations, will have some difficulty in understanding me, but you will understand, and they will understand, too, when I remind them that at Tillyra years ago dear Edward insisted on my making my dinner off the egg instead of the chicken, and on going to Mass on Sunday. He is interested, and so exclusively, in his own soul that he regards mine, when I am visiting him, as essential to the upkeep of his. Now, I can't help thinking that if I remain in Ireland and were to fall dangerously ill at Tillyra, the spiritual tyranny of years ago might be revived in a more serious form. His anxiety about his soul would force him to bring a Catholic priest to my bedside, and if this were to happen, and I failed to yell out in the holy man's ear when he bent over me to hear my confession, To hell with the Pope, the rumour would go forth that I died fortified by the rites of the Holy Catholic Church.

But you are not leaving us because you think you're going to die at Tillyra, and that Edward will bring a priest to your bedside?

No, that would be hardly a sufficient reason for leaving my friends; but I confess that I should like to die in a Protestant country among my co-religionists.

Moore is thinking of declaring himself a Protestant.

The Colonel has said that it would be a great grief to him if I were to do so; but you'll excuse me, Conan, if I don't stop to explain, for I notice that AE hasn't touched his fish, and that Teresa has begun to despair of being able to attract his attention to the lobster sauce. AE, I shall be obliged to ask everybody present to cease talking, so that you may eat your fish. The spirit in you must have acquired a great command over the flesh for that turbot not to tempt you. It tastes to me as if it had only just come out of the sea. A capon follows the turbot, the whole of our dinner; but have no fear, the bird is one of the finest, weighing nearly five pounds.

What beneficent Providence led it into such excesses of fat? cried Conan. It neither delved, nor span, nor wasted its tissues in vain flirtation; a little operation released it from all feminine trouble, and allowed it to spend its days in attaining a glory to which Moore, with all his literature, will never attain—the glory of fat capon. At the end of our laughter, Conan cried: The unlabouring brood of the coop. You know Yeats's line, The unlabouring brood of the skies? For a long time I thought that Yeats was referring to the priests, but he must have been thinking of capons; no, he knows nothing of capons. He must have been thinking of the stars.

Oh, songless bird, far sweeter than the rose! And virgin as a parish priest, God knows!

Fearing that Conan's jests might scandalise the gardener, and remembering that there was only white wine on the table, I sent him to the house to fetch the red. Teresa could remain, for she had told me she had not been to her duties for many a year, and I had come to look upon her as one of my sheaves.

A more fragrant bird was never carved, and I beg of you, AE, to eat the wing that the Gods have given you. He lived and died for us. And here is the gardener with the wine that comes to me from Bordeaux in barrels—a pleasant, sound dinner wine. I don't press it upon you as a vintage wine, but I am told that it is by no means disgraceful. You see I am dependent upon others, only knowing vin ordinaire from Château Lafitte because of my preference for the former. I warrant that the innocent nuns up there, now all abed, wondering why the lights are burning in my garden, are better bibbers than anybody at this table, except perhaps Conan. All a-row in their cells they lie, wondering what impiety their neighbour is organising. I suppose you have all heard the report that I have re-established the worship of Venus in this garden, bringing flowers to her statue every morning?

Perhaps they think these lamps are an illumination in her honour, AE suggested.

Causing them to look into their mirrors oftener than the rule allows. There was a time when I liked to stand at my back window and watch them following winding walks under beautiful trees, while their neighbours, the washerwomen, blasphemed over their washtubs. The contrast between the slum and the convent garden, separated by a nine-inch wall, used to amuse me; but now I take no further interest in my nuns, not since they have put up that horrible red-brick building—an examination hall or music-room—

Spoiling excellent material for kitchen-maids, said Conan.

Be that as it may, the most doleful sounds of harp and violin come through the window, spoiling my meditations. In Dublin there is no escape from the religious. If I walk to Carlisle Bridge to take a car to the Moat House I meet seminarists all along the pavement, groups of threes and fours; and full-blown priests flaunt past me—rosy-cheeked, pompous men, danging gold watch-chains across their paunches, and tipping silk hats over their benign brows—

Their vulpine brows, Conan said.

A black queue stretching right across Dublin, from Drumcondra along the Merrion Road. The other day a particularly aggressive priest walked step for step with me as far as Sydney Parade, and it seemed to me that when I altered my pace he altered his. I was going on to see John Eglinton, and no sooner had I outstepped the priest than the great wall of the convent confronted me. I wonder where all the money comes from?

Out of Purgatory's bank, Conan answered cheerfully; and there is no fear of them overdrawing their account, for money is always dribbling in. Nothing thrives in Ireland like a convent, a public-house, and a race-meeting. Any small house will do for a beginning; a poor-box is put in the wall, a couple of blind girls are taken in, and so salubrious is our climate that the nuns find themselves in five years in a Georgian house situated in the middle of a beautiful park. The convent whose music distracts your meditations is occupied by Loreto nuns—a teaching order, where the daughters of Dublin shopkeepers are sure of acquiring a nice accent in French and English. St Vincent's Hospital, at the corner, is run by nuns who employ trained nurses to tend the sick. The eyes of the modern nun may not look under the bedclothes; the medieval nun had no such scruples. Our neighbourhood is a little overdone in convents; the north side is still richer. But let's count what we have around us: two in Leeson Street, one in Baggot Street and a training college, one in Ballsbridge, two in Donnybrook, one in Ranelagh; there is a convent at Sandymount, and then there is John Eglinton's convent at Merrion; there is another in Booterstown. Stillorgan Road is still free from them; but I hear that a foreign order is watching the beautiful residences on the right and left, and as soon as one comes into the market—You have been out hawking, my dear Moore, and I appeal to you that the hen bird is much stronger, fiercer, swifter than the—

The tiercel.

The tiercel, of course, for while he was pursuing some quarry at Blackrock, the larger and the stronger birds, the Sister of Mercy and the Sister of the Sacred Heart, struck down Mount Annville, Milltown, and Linden. All the same, the little tiercel has managed to secure Stillorgan Castle on the adjacent hillside, a home for lunatic gentlemen, most of them Dublin publicans.

Like my neighbour Cunningham, who only just escaped incarceration.

His was a very tragic story, said John Eglinton. Did you never suspect him of being a bit queer?

It often seemed odd not to exchange a good morning from doorstep to doorstep. His old housekeeper was affable enough; she would bid me a kindly greeting when I returned home after a short absence in the West, and she must have gossiped with my servants, for some of the mystery with which he surrounded himself vanished. I certainly did hear from somebody that his rule was never to have a bite or sup outside his own house; it must have been my cook who told me, and now I come to think of it she added, somewhat contemptuously, that he dined in the middle of the day and went out for his walk at three o'clock.

As the clock struck he sallied forth, a most laughable and absurd little man, not more than two inches over five feet; a long, thick body was set on the shortest possible legs, and he was always dressed the same, in a yellow overcoat and wide grey trousers not unlike dear Edward's. It would be an exaggeration to say that Cunningham was one of the sights of Dublin when he rolled down the pavement for his walk with a thick stick in his hand, a corpulent cigar between his teeth, a white flower in his button-hole. He was one of the minor sights of Dublin as he went away towards the Phoenix Park, a jolly little fellow to the casual observer, but to me, who saw him every day, his good humour seemed superficial and to overlie a deep-set melancholy.

The melancholy of the dwarf, Conan said under his breath.

His walk was always up the main road of the Phoenix Park, as far as Castleknock Gate and back again, and I think his old housekeeper told Miss Gough that he wouldn't miss his walk for the King of England. You asked me if I knew him; I never saw anybody more determined not to make my acquaintance. When we passed each other in the street he always averted his eyes, and if I had been polite, I should have imitated him, but I could not keep myself from looking into his comical eyes turned up at the corners, and wondering at the great roll of flesh from ear to ear, and at the chins descending step by step into his bosom. It was from Sir Thornley Stoker that I learned how determined he was not to make my acquaintance. You can't guess, he said one day, whom I have let out of the room? Your next-door neighbour, Cunningham. I begged him to stay to meet you, but it was impossible to persuade him. He said Oh, no, I won't meet George: and on Sir Thornley pressing him to give a reason, he refused, urging as an excuse that I was an enemy of the Church. But I think myself that he was afraid I would put into print some of the stories that it was his wont to tell against the priests. He had stories about everybody, even about me. That very afternoon Sir Thornley could hardly speak for laughing. If you had only heard him just now telling—But tell me what it was. I can't tell you. It's the Dublin accent and the Dublin dialect. It was all about Evelyn Innes. You don't know what you've missed, and he turned over in his chair to laugh again. No, there's no use my trying to tell it; you should hear Cunningham. But I can't hear Cunningham; he won't know me. At last, apologising for spoiling the story, Sir Thornley told me that I must take for granted the racy description of two workmen who had come to Upper Ely Place to mend the drains in front of my house. After having dug a hole, they took a seat at either end, and sat spitting into it from time to time in solemn silence, until at last one said to the other, Do you know the fellow that lives in the house forninst us? You don't? Well, I'll tell you who he is: he's the fellow that wrote Evelyn Innes. And who was she? She was a great opera-singer. And the story is all about the ould hat. She was lying on a crimson sofa with mother-of pearl legs when the baronet came into the room, his eyes jumping out of his head and he as hot as be damned. Without so much as a good morrow, he jumped down on his knees alongside of her, and the next chapter is in Italy.

The crimson sofa with the mother-of-pearl legs, and the baronet as hot as be damned, would be about as much of your story as a Dublin workman would be likely to gather from the book, John Eglinton said.

The touch that Evelyn Innes is all about the old hat is excellent, Conan added, and then became grave like a dog that licks his lips after a savoury morsel. And, continuing, I told them how, in the last three months before his death, we all noticed a great change in Cunningham; his face turned the colour of lead, and the old housekeeper often talked to Miss Gough about him, not saying much, expressing her alarm as old women do, with a shake of the head. One day she said the master had gone very queer lately, that he would sit for hours brooding, not saying a word to anybody; and it was about three weeks after that she rushed into our house distracted, wringing her hands, speaking incoherently, telling us that, not finding her master in his bedroom when she took him up his cup of tea, she had gone to seek him in the closet, and not finding him there, she had rushed up to the top landing. He was after hanging himself from the banisters, she wailed, and I sent for the police and for his solicitor and sat on the stairs till they came. No one will ever know what he suffered. Didn't I tell Miss Gough that he would sit for hours, and he not saying a word to any one? He must have been thinking of it all that time, and little did I understand him when he said—many and many's the time he said it as he went upstairs to bed: They'll never get me as long as I've got this right hand on my body.

I don't know if the tragedy transpires in my telling, but what I see is a retired publican overcome by scruples of conscience, his failing brain filled with memories of how he had beguiled customers with stories about the clergy into drinking more than was good for them. A man of that kind would very soon begin to believe that the allies of the clergy, the demons, were after him, and that he could only save himself by giving all his money for Masses for the repose of his soul. And that is what he did. It all went in Masses, or nearly all; the relations got a very small part, after threatening to contest the will. But what interests me is the agony of mind that he must have suffered week in, week out, repeating it, They'll never get me as long as I've got this right hand on my body. The phrase must have run in the old housekeeper's head, and somebody, seeing that his mind was giving way and fearing lest he might kill himself, may have said to him: You had better put yourself under restraint. His adviser may have suggested John of God's, and this advice, though well meant, may, perhaps, have destroyed what remained of his poor mind. They'll never get me as long as I've got this right hand on my body. It was with that phrase he went up to bed one evening and hanged himself next morning from the banisters with a leather strap. Miss Gough met him coming home the evening before he killed himself, and she tells me that she'll never forget the look in his face. Have you ever seen a maniac, and the cunning look out of the corner of the eyes which says: Now you think you're going to get the best of me, but you aren't. She remembers noticing that look in his face as he passed her, his two hands thrust into the pockets of his short overcoat. He was bringing home the strap, for the old woman said at the inquest that he had bought it that evening. I suppose he was hiding it under his overcoat. I wonder why he waited till early next morning before hanging himself. Poor little man! That strap was the great romance of his life.

The phrase jarred a little. No one answered, and then, his voice hardly breaking the silence, John Eglinton spoke of a tragedy that occurred almost under his own windows, the barred windows of an old coaching inn, at the end of a little avenue of elm-trees, down at Merrion, overlooking the great park in which the convent stands. A nun had been found drowned, whether by her companions or by the gardener was not related in the newspapers—merely the fact that she had been found in the pond one morning. It was stated at the inquest that the nun was a sleep-walker, and the verdict returned was one of accidental death. The verdict of suicide in a moment of temporary insanity would not have been agreeable to the nuns, but to me, a teller of tales, it is more interesting to think that she had gone down in the night to escape from some thought, some fear, some suffering that could be endured no longer. She was free to leave the convent; the bars that restrained her were no iron bars, but they were not less secure for that. She may have suffered, like Cunningham, from scruples of conscience, and gone down in despair to the pond.

And while you were dressing yourself to go to the National Library, she was floating among water-weeds and flowers.

Moore is thinking of Millais's Ophelia, said AE.

Yes, and I was thinking of Evelyn Innes. The most literary end for her would be to have drowned herself in the fish-pond.

I'm sorry it didn't occur to you.

It did occur to me many times, and I could see and hear the nuns coming down in the morning and finding her floating.

A body doesn't float, AE said, till nine days after. He can't shake himself free from the memory of Ophelia.

Conan, who had been left out of the conversation for a long time, was getting irritated, and he jumped into it as an athlete jumps into the arena.

Moore is wondering what thought, what fear, what scruple of conscience may have sent her down to that pond, as if it were not quite obvious what drove her down there. She was in love with John, who would not listen to her, and one night, finding that he had put bars on his window, she walked towards the pond, as Moore would say, like one overtaken by an irreparable catastrophe.

AE and I laughed. John looked a little puzzled and a little vexed, as he always does at any allusion to himself. The wicket-gate clanged, and Teresa came across the greensward, saying, Please, sir, you're wanted on the telephone, and Conan disappeared quickly in the darkness.

We all wished—or perhaps it would be more exact if I said that I wished—to discuss Conan now that he had left us, and, seeking for some natural transition, I watched a moth buzzing round the globe of the lamp, and thought of the desire of the moth for the star. Conan would be able to repeat the poem, but that transition would be too obvious. It was the moon that gave me one—the yellow sickle rising on a leaden sky among the arches and chimneys of the convent.

We have heard what Conan thinks of the nuns; now I wonder what the nuns would think of Conan?

AE spoke of his reckless imagination and his power of perceiving distant analogies, connecting the capon and the priests with Yeats's line, The unlabouring brood of the skies; and, better still, the house of symbols, the antique coffin, and the disconsolate dealer standing at the end of Kingstown Pier watching the furniture departing under a smoke pall.

I wonder what he will become?

I was much struck, John Eglinton said, at Meyer's prophecy. Do you remember it? He said that he had known many young men like Conan, all very defiant until they were thirty; and every one, after thirty, had developed into commonplace fathers of families, renowned for all the virtues.

I wonder will that be the end of Conan?

A deep silence followed, and then, half to myself and half to my companions, I said:

Do you think he has shaken himself free from Catholic superstitions?

John Eglinton was not sure that he had done this.

Merely telling stories about the avarice of priests is not enough; a man must think himself out of it, and I'm not sure that Meyer isn't right. Catholics are Agnostic in youth, quiescent in middle age, craw-thumpers between fifty and sixty.

Then we began to talk, as all Irishmen do, of what Ireland was, what she is, and what she is becoming.

There is no becoming in Ireland, I answered; she is always the same—a great inert mass of superstition.



And perhaps the parish priest will drown in this flood.

AE did not think this necessary.

Do you think the flood of intelligence will penetrate into the convents and release the poor women wasting their lives?

I'm not thinking of nuns, John Eglinton said; those who have gone into convents had better remain in them; and Home Rule will be of no avail unless somebody comes with it, like Fox or like Bunyan, bringing the Bible or writing a book like the Pilgrim's Progress—Moore is too much of a toff.

The Messiah will not wear the appearance that you expect him to wear. Salvation always comes from an unexpected quarter. It may come from AE, it may come from me, it may come from you.

John laughed scornfully at the idea that he should bring anybody anything.

It was against my advice, John, that you named your magazine after the goddess; you should have called it The Heretic.

You are quite right, AE. We want heresy in Ireland, for there can be no religious thought without heresy. Spain declined as soon as she rid herself of her heretics, if one can call Mohammedanism a heresy; at least, it was a competitive religion; the persecution of the Protestants in France was followed by the expulsion of the Jesuits and the confiscation of their lands. No country can afford to be without heretics, and, in view of the tendency of Catholic countries to rid themselves of their clergy, wouldn't it be a good thing for the Irish Bishops to send Logue to the Vatican so that he might explain to His Holiness the necessity of Protestantism? You needn't look further than Ireland for an apt illustration, holy Father. If, on the passing of the Home Rule Bill, we are set to work to persecute the Protestant minority, the terrible fate of exile may be mine. We must look ahead, holy Father.

Logue may beg His Holiness to withdraw the Ne Temere decree, said John Eglinton.

I wouldn't advise Logue to be too explicit. The decree can be politely ignored by the Irish Bishops. When a Catholic girl who is going to marry a Protestant approaches the priest to learn in what religion her children shall be brought up, he will answer her: In the religion of your husband. But my husband is a Protestant. My dear daughter, we do not know if he'll remain a Protestant; we rely on you to use every effort to persuade him from the errors of Protestantism, so that your children may be brought up in our Holy Church. And to the young man who wishes to marry a Protestant girl the priest will say: Your children will be brought up in the religion of their mother. But their mother is a Protestant. We do not know, my dear son, that your wife will remain a Protestant; if you will do all in your power to bring her into the one true fold, I am confident that you'll succeed.

The idea is an ingenious one, said John Eglinton, and Teresa came across the sward to tell me that Mr Osborne, Mr Hughes, Mr Longworth, Mr Seumas O'Sullivan, Mr Atkinson, and Mr Yeats, were waiting in the dining-room.

Will you have coffee in the house or out here, sir?

We had better have it in the house. The table has to be cleared. And Teresa, please place a lamp at the wicket, for if you don't you'll certainly break my dessert service and hurt yourself. Come, AE, I've got a cigar for you that I think will please you, and afterwards you can smoke your pipe.