could not have carried on a comedy of deception with her; he
could not have lived with her openly. He had done what seemed to him
best. How was he to blame? Now that she was gone he understood how
lonely her life must have been, sitting night after night alone in that
room. His life would be lonely too until he, too, died, ceased to exist,
became a memory--if anyone remembered him.

It was after nine o'clock when he left the shop. The night was cold and
gloomy. He entered the Park by the first gate and walked along under the
gaunt trees. He walked through the bleak alleys where they had walked
four years before. She seemed to be near him in the darkness. At moments
he seemed to feel her voice touch his ear, her hand touch his. He stood
still to listen. Why had he withheld life from her? Why had he sentenced
her to death? He felt his moral nature falling to pieces.

When he gained the crest of the Magazine Hill he halted and looked
along the river towards Dublin, the lights of which burned redly and
hospitably in the cold night. He looked down the slope and, at the base,
in the shadow of the wall of the Park, he saw some human figures lying.
Those venal and furtive loves filled him with despair. He gnawed the
rectitude of his life; he felt that he had been outcast from life's
feast. One human being had seemed to love him and he had denied her life
and happiness: he had sentenced her to ignominy, a death of shame. He
knew that the prostrate creatures down by the wall were watching him and
wished him gone. No one wanted him; he was outcast from life's feast.
He turned his eyes to the grey gleaming river, winding along towards
Dublin. Beyond the river he saw a goods train winding out of Kingsbridge
Station, like a worm with a fiery head winding through the darkness,
obstinately and laboriously. It passed slowly out of sight; but still
he heard in his ears the laborious drone of the engine reiterating the
syllables of her name.

He turned back the way he had come, the rhythm of the engine pounding
in his ears. He began to doubt the reality of what memory told him. He
halted under a tree and allowed the rhythm to die away. He could not
feel her near him in the darkness nor her voice touch his ear. He
waited for some minutes listening. He could hear nothing: the night was
perfectly silent. He listened again: perfectly silent. He felt that he
was alone.

IVY DAY IN THE COMMITTEE ROOM

OLD JACK raked the cinders toget