a Morgan since the morning after he had failed to
stop the runaway horse. Many times, indeed, she had been in his mind,
and often at Trinity, in the long sleepless nights that afflict a young
man who is newly conscious of his manhood, he had turned from side to
side of his bed in an impotent effort to thrust her from his thoughts.
He made fanciful pictures of her in his imagination, making her very
beautiful and gracious. He saw her, then, with long dark hair that had
the lustre of a moonless night of stars, and he imagined her, sitting
close to him, so that her hair fell about his head and shoulder and he
could feel the slow movement of her breasts against his side. He would
close his eyes and think of her lips on his, and her heart beating
quickly while his thumped so loudly that it seemed that every one must
hear it ... and thinking thus, he would clench his fists with futile
force and swear to himself that he would go to her and make her marry
him. Once, when he had spent an afternoon at the Zoo in the Phoenix
Park, he had lingered for a long while in the house where the tigers are
caged because, suddenly, it seemed to him that the graceful beast with
the bright eyes resembled Sheila. It moved so easily, and as it moved,
its fine skin rippled over its muscles like running water....

"I don't suppose she'd like to be called a tigress," he had thought to
himself, laughing as he did so, "but that's what she's like. She's
beautiful...."

And later in that afternoon, he thought he saw a resemblance between
Mary Graham and a brown squirrel that sat on a branch and cracked nuts,
throwing the shells away carelessly ... the Mary he had known when he
first went to Boveyhayne, not the Mary he had seen on his last visit.

He wondered whether Sheila had altered much, and then he wondered what
change four years had made in Mary Graham. Sheila, who had been dominant
in his mind in his first year at Trinity, had receded a little into the
background by the time he had quitted Dublin, but Mary, never very
prominent, had retained her place, neither gaining nor losing position.
It was odd, he thought to himself, that he had not been to Boveyhayne in
the four years he had been at T.C.D. Mrs. Graham had invited him there
several times, but he had not been able to accept the invitations: once
his father had been ill, and he had had to hurry to Portrush, where he
was staying, and remain with him until he was well again; and another
time