ar by, and the air was
full of pleasant sounds: the rattle of carts, the call of a man to a
dog, the whinnying of horses and the deep lowing of cows. He turned on
his side and looked seawards. The sun had set in a great field of golden
cloud, throwing splashes of light down the sides of the mountains and
turning little rain-pools into pools of fire; but now the dusk was
settling down, and as Henry looked towards the sea, he saw lights
shining out of the houses, making warm and comforting signals in the
dark. Dublin lay curled about the Bay, covered by smoke that was pierced
here and there by the chimney-stacks of factories. There, beneath him,
were little rocking lights on the boats and ships that lay in Kingstown
Harbour or drifted up and down the Irish Sea, and over there, across the
Bay, the great high hump of Howth thrust itself upwards. A tired ship
sailed slowly up to the city, trailing a long line of white foam behind
her.... He stood up and looked about him; and again the love of Ireland
came into his heart, and this time he did not try to check it. He
yielded to it, giving himself up to it completely....

"You can't help it," he murmured to himself. "You simply can't help
it!..."

But he loved England, too. There had been nights when he had loved
London as a man might love his mother ... when the curve of the Thames,
and the dark shine of its water against the arches of Waterloo Bridge,
and the bulging dome of St. Paul's rising proudly out of the haze and
smoke, and the view of the little humpy hills at Harrow that was seen
from the Hampstead Heath ... when all these became like living things
that loved him and were loved by him. Once, with Gilbert, he had
wandered over Romney Marsh, from Hythe to Rye, and had felt that Kent
and Sussex were as close to him as Antrim and Down. And Devonshire, from
north and south, was friendly and native to him. He had tramped about
Exmoor and had seen the red deer running swiftly from the hunt, and had
climbed a bare scarp of Dartmoor, startling the wild ponies so that
they ran off with their long tails flying in the air, scattering the
flocks of sheep in their flight. The very names of the Devonshire rivers
were like homely music to him, and he would say the names over to
himself for the pleasure of their sound: Taw and Tamar and Torridge, the
Teign and the Dart and the Exe, and the rivers about Boveyhayne, the Sid
and the Otter, the Coly, the Axe and the Yarty....

"I'm no