ture he thrust the stick
back into Stephen's hand. Stephen felt that his anger had another cause
but, feigning patience, touched his arm slightly and said quietly:

--Cranly, I told you I wanted to speak to you. Come away.

Cranly looked at him for a few moments and asked:

--Now?

--Yes, now, Stephen said. We can't speak here. Come away.

They crossed the quadrangle together without speaking. The bird call
from SIEGFRIED whistled softly followed them from the steps of the
porch. Cranly turned, and Dixon, who had whistled, called out:

--Where are you fellows off to? What about that game, Cranly?

They parleyed in shouts across the still air about a game of billiards
to be played in the Adelphi hotel. Stephen walked on alone and out into
the quiet of Kildare Street opposite Maple's hotel he stood to wait,
patient again. The name of the hotel, a colourless polished wood, and
its colourless front stung him like a glance of polite disdain. He
stared angrily back at the softly lit drawing-room of the hotel in
which he imagined the sleek lives of the patricians of Ireland housed
in calm. They thought of army commissions and land agents: peasants
greeted them along the roads in the country; they knew the names of
certain French dishes and gave orders to jarvies in high-pitched
provincial voices which pierced through their skin-tight accents.

How could he hit their conscience or how cast his shadow over the
imaginations of their daughters, before their squires begat upon them,
that they might breed a race less ignoble than their own? And under the
deepened dusk he felt the thoughts and desires of the race to which he
belonged flitting like bats across the dark country lanes, under trees
by the edges of streams and near the pool-mottled bogs. A woman had
waited in the doorway as Davin had passed by at night and, offering him
a cup of milk, had all but wooed him to her bed; for Davin had the mild
eyes of one who could be secret. But him no woman's eyes had wooed.

His arm was taken in a strong grip and Cranly's voice said:

--Let us eke go.

They walked southward in silence. Then Cranly said:

--That blithering idiot, Temple! I swear to Moses, do you know, that
I'll be the death of that fellow one time.

But his voice was no longer angry and Stephen wondered was he thinking
of her greeting to him under the porch.

They turned to the left and walked on as before. When they had gone on
so for some time Stephen sai