all sure of it, Stephen said. He is more like a son of
God than a son of Mary.

--And is that why you will not communicate, Cranly asked, because you
are not sure of that too, because you feel that the host, too, may be
the body and blood of the son of God and not a wafer of bread? And
because you fear that it may be?

--Yes, Stephen said quietly, I feel that and I also fear it.

--I see, Cranly said.

Stephen, struck by his tone of closure, reopened the discussion at once
by saying:

--I fear many things: dogs, horses, fire-arms, the sea,
thunder-storms, machinery, the country roads at night.

--But why do you fear a bit of bread?

--I imagine, Stephen said, that there is a malevolent reality behind
those things I say I fear.

--Do you fear then, Cranly asked, that the God of the Roman catholics
would strike you dead and damn you if you made a sacrilegious
communion?

--The God of the Roman catholics could do that now, Stephen said. I fear
more than that the chemical action which would be set up in my soul by
a false homage to a symbol behind which are massed twenty centuries of
authority and veneration.

--Would you, Cranly asked, in extreme danger, commit that particular
sacrilege? For instance, if you lived in the penal days?

--I cannot answer for the past, Stephen replied. Possibly not.

--Then, said Cranly, you do not intend to become a protestant?

--I said that I had lost the faith, Stephen answered, but not that I
had lost self-respect. What kind of liberation would that be to forsake
an absurdity which is logical and coherent and to embrace one which is
illogical and incoherent?

They had walked on towards the township of Pembroke and now, as they
went on slowly along the avenues, the trees and the scattered lights in
the villas soothed their minds. The air of wealth and repose diffused
about them seemed to comfort their neediness. Behind a hedge of laurel
a light glimmered in the window of a kitchen and the voice of a servant
was heard singing as she sharpened knives. She sang, in short broken
bars:

Rosie O'Grady.

Cranly stopped to listen, saying:

--MULIER CANTAT.

The soft beauty of the Latin word touched with an enchanting touch the
dark of the evening, with a touch fainter and more persuading than the
touch of music or of a woman's hand. The strife of their minds was
quelled. The figure of a woman as she appears in the liturgy of the
church passed silently through the d