a
feeling that Russell was unaware of human presences, that the company of
human beings was not necessary to him, that his speech was addressed,
not to the visible audience or the visible companion, but to an audience
or a companion that no one but himself could see. Was there any one on
earth less like the typical Ulsterman than George Russell, who preached
mysticism and better business, or Ernest Harper who took penny tramrides
to pay visits to the fairies?

No, this theory of some inherent difference between Ulstermen and other
Irishmen would not work. There must be some other explanation of Henry's
dislike of crowds, his silence in large companies, his inability to
assert himself in the presence of strangers. Why was it that he was
unable to talk about himself and the things he had done and the things
he meant to do as Marsh talked? It was not because he was more modest,
had more humility, than Marsh; for in his heart, Henry was vain.... And
while he was asking himself this question, suddenly he found the answer.
It was because he was afraid to talk about himself, it was because he
had not got the courage to be vain and self-assertive in crowds. His
inability to talk among strangers, to make people cease their own
conversation in order to listen to him, was part of that cowardice that
had prevented him from diving into the sea when he went with his father
to swim at Cushendall and had sent him shivering into the shelter of
the hedge when the runaway horse came galloping down the Ballymena
road....

This swift, lightning revelation made him stand up in the carriage and
gape at the photographs of Irish scenery in front of him.

"Oh, my God!" he said to himself, "am I always to be tortured like
this?"

4

He sat back in his seat and lay against the cushions without moving. He
saw himself now very clearly, for he had the power to see himself with
the closest fidelity. He knew now that all his explanations were
excuses, that the bitter things he had sometimes said of those who had
qualities which he had not, were invented to prevent him from admitting
that he was without courage. Any fight, mental or physical, unnerved him
when it brought him into personal contact with his opponents. He could
write wounding things to a man, but he could not say them to him without
losing possession of himself and his tongue; and so he passed from the
temper of a cool antagonist to that of an enraged shrew. He had tried to
explai