child.

Meeting her a third time by accident he found courage to make an
appointment. She came. This was the first of many meetings; they met
always in the evening and chose the most quiet quarters for their walks
together. Mr. Duffy, however, had a distaste for underhand ways and,
finding that they were compelled to meet stealthily, he forced her to
ask him to her house. Captain Sinico encouraged his visits, thinking
that his daughter's hand was in question. He had dismissed his wife so
sincerely from his gallery of pleasures that he did not suspect that
anyone else would take an interest in her. As the husband was often
away and the daughter out giving music lessons Mr. Duffy had many
opportunities of enjoying the lady's society. Neither he nor she had had
any such adventure before and neither was conscious of any incongruity.
Little by little he entangled his thoughts with hers. He lent her books,
provided her with ideas, shared his intellectual life with her. She
listened to all.

Sometimes in return for his theories she gave out some fact of her own
life. With almost maternal solicitude she urged him to let his nature
open to the full: she became his confessor. He told her that for some
time he had assisted at the meetings of an Irish Socialist Party where
he had felt himself a unique figure amidst a score of sober workmen in
a garret lit by an inefficient oil-lamp. When the party had divided into
three sections, each under its own leader and in its own garret, he had
discontinued his attendances. The workmen's discussions, he said,
were too timorous; the interest they took in the question of wages was
inordinate. He felt that they were hard-featured realists and that they
resented an exactitude which was the produce of a leisure not within
their reach. No social revolution, he told her, would be likely to
strike Dublin for some centuries.

She asked him why did he not write out his thoughts. For what, he asked
her, with careful scorn. To compete with phrasemongers, incapable of
thinking consecutively for sixty seconds? To submit himself to the
criticisms of an obtuse middle class which entrusted its morality to
policemen and its fine arts to impresarios?

He went often to her little cottage outside Dublin; often they spent
their evenings alone. Little by little, as their thoughts entangled,
they spoke of subjects less remote. Her companionship was like a warm
soil about an exotic. Many times she allowed the d