rfectly-shaped, and with that indescribable
charm of feature which neither the pen nor the camera can do justice
to--Norah Castellan was facing him, her eyes gleaming and almost black
with anger, and her whole body instinct with intense vitality.

"And so Ireland hasn't troubles enough of her own, John, that you must
bring new ones upon her, and what for? To realise a dream that was never
anything else but a dream, and to satisfy a revenge that is three
hundred years old! If that theory of yours about re-incarnation is true,
you may have been a Spaniard once, but remember that you're an Irishman
now; and you're no good Irishman if you sell yourself to these
foreigners to do a thing like that, and it's your sister that's telling
you."

"And it's your brother, Norah," he replied, his black brows meeting
almost in a straight line across his forehead, "who tells you that
Ireland is going to have her independence; that the shackles of the
Saxon shall be shaken off once and for ever, even if all Europe blazes
up with war in the doing of it. I have the power and I will use it.
Spaniard or Irishman, what does it matter? I hate England and everything
English."

"Hate England, John!" said the girl. "Are you quite sure that it isn't
an Englishman that you hate?"

"Well, and what if I do? I hate all Englishmen, and I'm the first
Irishman who has ever had the power to put his hatred into acts instead
of words--and you, an Irish girl, with six generations of Irish blood in
your veins, you, to talk to me like this. What are you thinking about,
Norah? Is that what you call patriotism?"

"Patriotism!" she echoed, unclasping her hands, and holding her right
hand out towards him. "I'm as Irish as you are, and as Spanish, too, for
the matter of that, for the same blood is in the veins of both of us.
You're a scholar and a genius, and all the rest of it, I grant you; but
haven't you learned history enough to know that Ireland never was
independent, and never could be? What brought the English here first?
Four miserable provinces that called themselves kingdoms, and all
fighting against each other, and the king of one of them stole the wife
of the king of another of them, and that's how the English came.

"I love Ireland as well as you do, John, but Ireland is not worth
setting the world swimming in blood for. You're lighting a match-box to
set the world ablaze with. It isn't Ireland only, remember. There are
Irish all over the world,