t be in time to see him arriving in
a motor car at the stage door, when they could have a good look at him
getting out of the car and going into the theater. At these tidings
Mrs. Makebelieve roused for a moment from her strange apathy. Since
tea-time she had sat (not as usual upright and gesticulating, but
humped up and flaccid) staring at a blob of condensed milk on the
outside of the tin. She said she thought she would go out and see the
great actor, although what all the women saw in him to go mad about
she did not know, but in another moment she settled back to her
humped-up position and restored her gaze to the condensed milk tin.
With a little trouble Mary got her to bed, where, after being hugged
for one moment, she went swiftly and soundly to sleep.

Mary was troubled because of her mother's illness, but, as it is
always difficult to believe in the serious illness of another person
until death has demonstrated its gravity, she soon dismissed the
matter from her mind. This was the more easily done because her mind
was teeming with impressions and pictures and scraps of dialogue.

As her mother was sleeping peacefully, Mary put on her hat and went
out. She wanted, in her then state of mind, to walk in the solitude
which can only be found in crowded places, and also she wanted some
kind of distraction. Her days had lately been so filled with adventure
that the placid immobility of the top back room was not only irksome,
but maddening, and her mother's hasty and troubled breathing came
between her and her thoughts. The poor furniture of the room was
hideous to her eyes, the uncarpeted floor and bleak, stained walls
dulled her.

She went out, and in a few moments was part of the crowd which passes
and repasses nightly from the Rotunda up the broad pathways of
Sackville Street, across O'Connell Bridge, up Westmoreland Street,
past Trinity College, and on through the brilliant lights of Grafton
Street to the Fusiliers' Arch at the entrance to St. Stephen's Green
Park. Here from half-past seven o'clock in the evening youthful
Dublin marches in joyous procession. Sometimes bevies of young girls
dance by, each a giggle incarnate. A little distance behind these a
troop of young men follow stealthily and critically. They will be
acquainted and more or less happily paired before the Bridge is
reached. But generally the movement is in couples. Appointments,
dating from the previous night, have filled the streets with happ