it came.

"It's absurd of him to behave like that," he said to himself, and went
on his way about the garden.

Presently he saw Marsh approaching him, and he stood still and waited
for him.

"I'm sorry, Henry," Marsh said when he had come up to him.

"It was my fault," Henry replied.

"I ought not to have walked off like that ... but I can't bear to hear
any one talking!..."

"I know you can't," Henry interrupted. "That's why I ought not to have
said what I did!"

But Marsh insisted on bearing the blame. "I ought to have remembered
that you're not feeling well," he said, reproaching himself. "I get so
interested in Ireland that I forget about people's feelings. That's my
chief fault. I know it is. I must try to remember.... I suppose you
didn't really mean what you said?"

"Yes, I did," Henry replied quickly.

"But why?"

"I don't know. I just don't want to. What's the good of it anyhow?..."

Good of it! Henry ought to have known what a passion of patriotism his
scorn for the Language would provoke.

"Oh, all right, John!" he said impatiently. "I've heard all that before,
and I don't want to hear it again. You can argue as much as you like,
but I can't see any sense in wasting time on what's over. And the Irish
language is over and done with. Father's quite right!"

Marsh's anger became intensified. "That's the Belfast spirit in you," he
exclaimed. "The pounds, shillings and pence mood! I know what you think
of the language. You think, what is the commercial value of it? Will it
enable a boy to earn thirty shillings a week in an office? Is it as
useful as Pitman's Shorthand? That's what you're thinking!..."

"No, it's not, but if it were, it would be very sensible!"

"My God, Henry, can't you realise that a nation's language is the sound
of a nation's soul? Don't you understand, man, that if we can't speak
our own language then our souls are silent, dumb, inarticulate?... don't
you see what I mean?... and all the time we're using English, we're like
people who read translations. I don't care whether it is commercially
valuable or not. That's not the point. The point is that it's _us_, that
it's _our_ tongue, _our_ language, that it distinguishes us from the
English, insists on our difference from them. Do you see what I mean,
Henry? We _are_ different, aren't we? You realise that, don't you? We
_are_ different from the English, and nothing will ever make us like
them. My God, I'd hate to be like them!