run like hell if you were to point a penny pop-gun at them! If a peeler
was to take their names, they'd be shiverin' with fright. They'd fall
out of their trousers with the terror'd be on them!"

Henry did not answer. Indeed, it seemed incredible that there was any
fight in them ... if he had been asked for his opinion, he might have
said something similar to what this stranger had said to him ... but he
hated to hear the man's disparagement, and so he did not make any answer
to him.

"I'd rather have them on my side than have him," he thought as he moved
away, "with the stink of porter on him!"

It sickened him to see the generosity and the youth walking in the
company of the hopelessness of Ireland, training themselves in the
means of killing. "If they'd put all that energy and enthusiasm into
something that will preserve life and make it deeper and finer, nothing
could prevail against them. If only John had more intellect and less
emotion ... if Mineely and Connolly were less bitter!"

He walked along Grafton Street, turning phrases over in his mind, angry
phrases, bitter things that he would say to John Marsh when he met him.

"What have young lads and girls to do with Hate and Death?" he said to
himself, as if he were talking to Marsh. "You're perverting them from
their purpose! You're robbing God of His due ... of the hope that fills
His Heart with each generation!"

"But it's no good talking to him ... he's too fond of spilling over. If
he were like Yeats, content to love Ireland at a distance ... to 'arise
and go now' no further than the Euston Road ... he might achieve
something, and at all events, he'd be harmless!"

He turned out of Grafton Street into Stephen's Green.

"To-morrow," he said to himself, "I'll go to Fairyhouse!"

And then he went to his Club. He was tired and sleepy, and soon after
supper, he went to bed.

7

It was late when he awoke and so, feeling lazy after his day's climbing,
he resolved that he would not go to the races. "I'll loaf about," he
said, "and to-night I'll go to a theatre." There was a letter from Mary
and one from Roger. "_Gerald Luke was killed in France last week, and so
was Clifford Dartrey. Goeffrey Grant has been wounded badly. The
Improved Tories have suffered heavily in the War...._" Roger wrote.

When he had breakfasted, he left the Club and walked towards Sackville
Street. He would go to the Abbey Theatre, he thought, and book a seat
for the evening pe