a few moments ago,
and sat at the window looking over Stephen's Green. There was a blue
mist hanging over the trees, and the sky was full of light and colour. I
do not believe there is any place in the world where one sees so much of
the sky as in Dublin. It reaches up and up until you feel that if a bird
were to pierce the clouds with its beak, it would tear a hole in the
heavens and let the universe in. And while I was sitting there, I felt
very near to you, dearest. In ten days we shall be married, and then you
will come with me and see these places, too. I shall become Irish over
again when I show you my home, and I shall watch Ireland taking hold of
you and absorbing you and making you as Irish as I am. You'll go on
thinking that you're English until some one speaks disparagingly of
Ireland, and then you'll flare up, and you'll be Irish, not only in
nature, but in knowledge. Ireland does that to people, so you cannot
hope to escape. Good-night, my very dear!_"

6

On Sunday, he went into the mountains, and in the evening he returned to
Dublin. There was an extraordinary quietness in the streets, though they
were crowded with people ... the quietness that comes when people are
tired and happy. As he crossed O'Connell Bridge, he stood for a few
moments to look up the Liffey. The sunset had transmuted the river to
the look of a sheet of crinkled gold, and the sunlight made the houses
on the quays look warm and lovely, even though they were old and worn
and discoloured. "In her heart," he thought, "Dublin is still a proud
lady, although her dress be draggled!"

He turned to look at a company of Volunteers who were marching towards
Liberty Hall. There were little girls in Gaelic dress at the head of
them, accompanied by a pale, tired-looking woman, with tightened lips,
who stumped heavily by the side of them; and following them, came young
men and boys and a shuffling group of hungry labourers, misshapen by
heavy toil and privation ... and as the company passed by, girls stood
on the pavement and jeered at them. They pointed to the woman with
tightened lips, and mocked at her uniform and her tossed hair....

"They're fools," Henry thought, looking at them as they went wearily on,
"but, by God, they're finer than the people who jeer at them. They ...
they are serving something ... and these Don't-Care-a-Damners aren't
serving anything!..."

There was a man at his elbow who turned to him and said, "Them lads 'ud