need not be worritin' about your
uncle Alan's dogs....

"I'm afeared I've given you a poor picture of this woman, Shane
Campbell: but it's a queer thing, you'd feel this woman more nor you'd
see her. In a great deal of people, you wouldn't note her at all. But
were you coming along the road, and a fey feeling come over you, and you
say: Around the next corner is something kindly, something brave,
something fine; as you turned the corner you'd meet this woman.

"Your uncle Alan liked this woman, liked her fine, but this woman was
sick with love for your uncle Alan.

"You'll blame me sore, Shane Campbell, and rightly too; it was very
careless of me, me who's got a careful name--it didn't seem to matter,
though! The name of this woman is not at me ..."

All the tears in Shane's eyes, all the emptiness in his heart was gone
now. A sudden elation seized him. He understood. Alan Donn had done a
fine brave thing; Alan Donn had done the strong thing, the right thing,
as Alan always did.

He thought: Alan was in love with this woman and this woman with Alan,
and Alan had looked ahead sanely, seen, decided. Thirty years difference
of age. Dignified strong wisdom and beautiful brave youth, one firm as a
great firm rock, the other with the light wings of birds; spiritually
never could they mate. Youth spiritual is like a gosling of yellow down,
age spiritual is an eagle of great wings.... If the spirit has not
died.... Alan would never be an irritated, jealous, paretic old man, nor
would he see "this woman" grow stern with repression and ache, and
loneliness of heart and spirit....

Ah, he had done it well! A line of Froissart's came to Shane: "They were
very noble; they cared nothing for their lives!" He had given her no
shattered marriage, no empty explanation that breeds only bitterness and
perhaps contempt. He had given her a very gallant memory that would
exalt her in the coming days.... The world, the flesh, and the devil had
played at cards with Alan Donn, and Alan had won....

He thought: Were it I now, I should have drifted into this, and come to
ancient tortured days, and not having strength maybe, should have ended,
not before as Alan Donn did, gallantly, but afterward, meanly, leaving
bitterness and desolation.... Ah, wise Alan.

And it occurred to him suddenly, wise Alan, fey on the threshold of
death, remembering him: There is virtue in the yellow gorse of Ulster,
in the purple Ulster heather. Come back to w