ting_.)

KATHARINE. And of what--now?

PARNELL. The next generation--possibly the next but one: you and I gone,
and Ireland free. In this last year we may have done more for that--than
we could ever have planned. We've given them a bone to bite on: and
there's meat on it--real meat. And because of that, they call you my ruin,
eh? I look rather like one, I suppose, just now. But as I came home
to-night, all my mind was filled with you; and I knew that to me you were
worth far more than all the rest. And then suddenly I thought--what am I
worth to you?

KATHARINE. This--that if now you told me to go--because it was for your
good--I'd go--glad--yes glad that you'd made me do for you, at last,
something that was hard to do--for the first time, dearest, for the first
time!

PARNELL (_deeply moved_). That so? Not an accident, then, eh?

KATHARINE (_embracing him_). Oh, my dear, my dear, my dear!

PARNELL. How true to life love makes everything!--so clear and straight--
looking back now. Through you I've learned this truth at any rate--that
there are two things about which a man must never compromise--first his
own soul, the right to be himself--no matter what others may think or do.

KATHARINE. And the other?

PARNELL. His instinct, of trust or distrust, in the character of others. I
hadn't any real doubt, but I compromised with instinct to gain my end: did
things I didn't believe were any good--accepted the word of men I didn't
trust. Home Rule itself was a compromise that I made myself accept. But I
never really believed in it. For you can't limit the liberty of a nation,
if it's really alive. Then came the smash--that woke me. And that I was
awake at last our love came to be the proof...Something different has got
to be now. Ireland will have to become more real--more herself, more of a
rebel than ever she has been yet. If, thirty years hence, my failure shall
have helped to bring that about--an Ireland really free--then I've won....

(_The words come quietly, confidently; but it is the voice of an
exhausted man, whose physical resources are nearly at an end. For a long
time he sits quite still, holding his wife's hand, saying nothing, for he
has nothing more to say. A high screen behind the couch on which they rest
cuts off the gaslight; only the firelight plays fitfully upon the two
faces. Suddenly the brightness falls away, and over that foreshadowing of
death, now only three days distant, the scene closes_.)