then. I ought to tell
Mary. I can't go on just not joining, and letting her gradually
suspect. I ought to go to her, and tell her straight out. When my book's
done I'll go to her...."

"What sort of a man am I?" he said again. "Analysing myself like this
... turning myself inside out ... poking and probing into my mind!...
Fumbling over my life, that's what I'm doing! Why don't I stand up to
things? What's the meaning of me? What am I here for?"

If he could only strip himself to the marrow of his mind, if he could
only see inside himself and know what was his purpose and discover the
content of his being....

"I'm morbid," he said. "I'm too introspective. I ought to look out of
myself. But I can't. It isn't my fault that my eyes are turned inwards.
I'm made like that. I can't alter my make. I can destroy myself, but I
can't alter my make....

"Perhaps," he thought, "if I were to take more exercise, if I were to go
for long walks, I'd think less about these things. I'd get healthier
notions. If I were to enlist, go into the ranks, and endure all that the
men endure, that might make my mind healthier. All that drill and
marching....

"But it's the spirit of me that's wrong," he muttered aloud. "It's not
my body ... it's _me_!"

"I must work. I must work hard, and forget all this torturing!..."

He wrote furiously at his book, and gradually it came to its end. "I'll
go down to Dublin again," he said, when it was finished "and see if I
can't do something there that'll make me forget things!"

He stayed at Ballymartin until he had corrected the proofs of the new
book, and then some business on the estate kept him at home for nearly
another month. It was not until well in the New Year that he was able to
leave home, and almost at the last moment he decided not to go to
Dublin, but to travel from Belfast, by Liverpool, to Boveyhayne. Mary
had asked him to spend Christmas with them, but he had made an excuse:
estate business and his book; because he could not yet bring himself to
tell her of his cowardice. He felt that when he did so, she would end
their engagement, and he wished to keep her love as long as he could. He
wrote to her very frequently, more frequently than she wrote to him,
telling her of Irish affairs. She had had difficulty in understanding so
many things, but she was eager to know about them. He had filled a
letter with bitter complaint of the corruption in Irish civic life, and
she had asked why he