ssor, stroking his chin gravely
and nodding his head.

Stephen, checked by the crowd at the door, halted irresolutely. From
under the wide falling leaf of a soft hat Cranly's dark eyes were
watching him.

--Have you signed? Stephen asked.

Cranly closed his long thin-lipped mouth, communed with himself an
instant and answered:

--EGO HABEO.

--What is it for?

--QUOD?

--What is it for?

Cranly turned his pale face to Stephen and said blandly and bitterly:

--PER PAX UNIVERSALIS.

Stephen pointed to the Tsar's photograph and said:

--He has the face of a besotted Christ.

The scorn and anger in his voice brought Cranly's eyes back from a calm
survey of the walls of the hall.

--Are you annoyed? he asked.

--No, answered Stephen.

--Are you in bad humour?

--No.

--CREDO UT VOS SANGUINARIUS MENDAX ESTIS, said Cranly, QUIA FACIES
VOSTRA MONSTRAT UT VOS IN DAMNO MALO HUMORE ESTIS.

Moynihan, on his way to the table, said in Stephen's ear:

--MacCann is in tiptop form. Ready to shed the last drop. Brand new
world. No stimulants and votes for the bitches.

Stephen smiled at the manner of this confidence and, when Moynihan had
passed, turned again to meet Cranly's eyes.

--Perhaps you can tell me, he said, why he pours his soul so freely
into my ear. Can you?

A dull scowl appeared on Cranly's forehead. He stared at the table
where Moynihan had bent to write his name on the roll, and then said
flatly:

--A sugar!

--QUIS EST IN MALO HUMORE, said Stephen, EGO AUT VOS?

Cranly did not take up the taunt. He brooded sourly on his judgement
and repeated with the same flat force:

--A flaming bloody sugar, that's what he is!

It was his epitaph for all dead friendships and Stephen wondered
whether it would ever be spoken in the same tone over his memory. The
heavy lumpish phrase sank slowly out of hearing like a stone through a
quagmire. Stephen saw it sink as he had seen many another, feeling its
heaviness depress his heart. Cranly's speech, unlike that of Davin, had
neither rare phrases of Elizabethan English nor quaintly turned
versions of Irish idioms. Its drawl was an echo of the quays of Dublin
given back by a bleak decaying seaport, its energy an echo of the
sacred eloquence of Dublin given back flatly by a Wicklow pulpit.

The heavy scowl faded from Cranly's face as MacCann marched briskly
towards them from the other side of the hall.

--Here you are! said MacCann cheerily.

--Her